| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: no longer durst approach them. They were fed at first with the wounded
Barbarians; then they were thrown corpses that were still warm; they
refused them, and they all died. People wandered in the twilight along
the old enclosures, and gathered grass and flowers among the stones to
boil them in wine, wine being cheaper than water. Others crept as far
as the enemy's outposts, and entered the tents to steal food, and the
stupefied Barbarians sometimes allowed them to return. At last a day
arrived when the Ancients resolved to slaughter the horses of Eschmoun
privately. They were holy animals whose manes were plaited by the
pontiffs with gold ribbons, and whose existence denoted the motion of
the sun--the idea of fire in its most exalted form. Their flesh was
Salammbo |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: thought--of what might have happened, or might be happening, to
the living things in the sea.
`The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed
porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some
unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might
help me to interpret this, but I only learned that the bare idea
of writing had never entered her head. She always seemed to me,
I fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection
was so human.
`Within the big valves of the door--which were open and
broken--we found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery
The Time Machine |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: being are involved in the same perplexity, there is hope that when the one
appears more or less distinctly, the other will equally appear; and if we
are able to see neither, there may still be a chance of steering our way in
between them, without any great discredit.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Let us enquire, then, how we come to predicate many names of the
same thing.
THEAETETUS: Give an example.
STRANGER: I mean that we speak of man, for example, under many names--that
we attribute to him colours and forms and magnitudes and virtues and vices,
in all of which instances and in ten thousand others we not only speak of
|
