| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
Anabasis |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: in assurance at all times, but especially in the indifferent world.
Before withdrawing he drew nearer again to the spot where he had
first sat down, and in the movement he met the lady whom he had
seen praying and who was now on her way to the door. She passed
him quickly, and he had only a glimpse of her pale face and her
unconscious, almost sightless eyes. For that instant she looked
faded and handsome.
This was the origin of the rites more public, yet certainly
esoteric, that he at last found himself able to establish. It took
a long time, it took a year, and both the process and the result
would have been - for any who knew - a vivid picture of his good
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: with power to control even the municipal regulations of States,
and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains
such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs,--
an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections
of the country than perhaps any one other political idea,--no general assertion
of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character
of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable.
All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent
with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred
rights of human nature.
The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short
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