| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: professors or mistresses. But this system of education had one
great advantage. It did not teach anything, but it put no obstacle
in the way of any real talent that the pupil might chance to have.
Rachel, being musical, was allowed to learn nothing but music;
she became a fanatic about music. All the energies that might have
gone into languages, science, or literature, that might have made
her friends, or shown her the world, poured straight into music.
Finding her teachers inadequate, she had practically taught herself.
At the age of twenty-four she knew as much about music as most
people do when they are thirty; and could play as well as nature
allowed her to, which, as became daily more obvious, was a really
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: It was a downcast little man that followed him. 'Of course he is
very clever, but can I trust him in such a state?' he asked
himself. And when they were once more in a hansom, he took heart
of grace.
'Don't you think,' he faltered, 'it would be wiser, considering
all things, to put this business off?'
'Put off till tomorrow what can be done today?' cried Michael,
with indignation. 'Never heard of such a thing! Cheer up, it's
all right, go in and win--there's a lion-hearted Pitman!'
At Cannon Street they enquired for Mr Brown's piano, which had
duly arrived, drove thence to a neighbouring mews, where they
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: This misconception has probably arisen from two causes: first, the desire
to bring Plato's theory of language into accordance with the received
doctrine of the Platonic ideas; secondly, the impression created by
Socrates himself, that he is not in earnest, and is only indulging the
fancy of the hour.
1. We shall have occasion to show more at length, in the Introduction to
future dialogues, that the so-called Platonic ideas are only a semi-
mythical form, in which he attempts to realize abstractions, and that they
are replaced in his later writings by a rational theory of psychology.
(See introductions to the Meno and the Sophist.) And in the Cratylus he
gives a general account of the nature and origin of language, in which Adam
|