| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: serviceable, be they never so short, and worthy of honour, be they
never so humble;--from these, surely, at least, we may receive some
clear message of teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into the
mystery of life, and of its arts.
Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I grieve to
say, or rather--for that is the deeper truth of the matter--I
rejoice to say--this message of theirs can only be received by
joining them--not by thinking about them.
You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed you in
coming. But the main thing I have to tell you is,--that art must
not be talked about. The fact that there is talk about it at all,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they
might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might
be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and
jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from pay-
ing them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading
language and postures of adulation that they might
walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this
world. And for all this, the thanks they got were
cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they
that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.
Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: period of authorship. They are substantially the same in the twelfth Book
of the Laws as in the Meno and Phaedo; and since the Laws were written in
the last decade of his life, there is no time to which this change of
opinions can be ascribed. It is true that the theory of Ideas takes
several different forms, not merely an earlier and a later one, in the
various Dialogues. They are personal and impersonal, ideals and ideas,
existing by participation or by imitation, one and many, in different parts
of his writings or even in the same passage. They are the universal
definitions of Socrates, and at the same time 'of more than mortal
knowledge' (Rep.). But they are always the negations of sense, of matter,
of generation, of the particular: they are always the subjects of
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