| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: himself - and this made him wonder what could have been the length
of hers. He had wondered before at the coincidence of their
losses, especially as from time to time a new candle was set up.
On some occasion some accident led him to express this curiosity,
and she answered as if in surprise that he hadn't already
understood. "Oh for me, you know, the more there are the better -
there could never be too many. I should like hundreds and hundreds
- I should like thousands; I should like a great mountain of
light."
Then of course in a flash he understood. "Your Dead are only One?"
She hung back at this as never yet. "Only One," she answered,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: we all died, they'd he here just the same, though the others wouldn't. A
flower would go on growing, but it would stop smelling. Very well. Now
you tell me how we ascertain solidity. By the touch, don't we? Then, if
there was nobody to touch an object, what then? Seems to me touch is
just as much of a sense as your nose is." (He meant no personality, but
the first boy choked a giggle as the speaker hotly followed up his
thought.)" Seems to me by his reasoning that in a desert island there'd
be nothing it all--smells or shapes--not even an island. Seems to me
that's what you call logic."
The tutor directed his smile at the open window. "Berkeley--" said he.
"By Jove!" said the other boy, not heeding him, "and here's another
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: INTRODUCTION.
The Menexenus has more the character of a rhetorical exercise than any
other of the Platonic works. The writer seems to have wished to emulate
Thucydides, and the far slighter work of Lysias. In his rivalry with the
latter, to whom in the Phaedrus Plato shows a strong antipathy, he is
entirely successful, but he is not equal to Thucydides. The Menexenus,
though not without real Hellenic interest, falls very far short of the
rugged grandeur and political insight of the great historian. The fiction
of the speech having been invented by Aspasia is well sustained, and is in
the manner of Plato, notwithstanding the anachronism which puts into her
mouth an allusion to the peace of Antalcidas, an event occurring forty
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