| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: mind that they lost their forefathers' heirloom, exactly in proportion
as they began to believe it to be their exclusive possession, and to
deny other human beings any right to or share in it. It may have been
that the light given to their forefathers had, as they thought, really
departed. It may have been, also, that the light was there all around
them still, as bright as ever, but that they would not open their eyes
and behold it; or rather, could not open them, because selfishness and
pride had sealed them. It may have been, that inspiration was still
very near them too, if their spirits had been willing to receive it.
But of the fact of the change there was no doubt. For the old Hebrew
seers were men dealing with the loftiest and deepest laws: the Rabbis
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: Would walk ashamed of his adulteries,
And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes.
To make the body and the spirit one
With all right things, till no thing live in vain
From morn to noon, but in sweet unison
With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain
The soul in flawless essence high enthroned,
Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,
Mark with serene impartiality
The strife of things, and yet be comforted,
Knowing that by the chain causality
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: application to modern life.
He has long given up the notion that virtue cannot be taught; and he is
disposed to modify the thesis of the Protagoras, that the virtues are one
and not many. He is not unwilling to admit the sensible world into his
scheme of truth. Nor does he assert in the Republic the involuntariness of
vice, which is maintained by him in the Timaeus, Sophist, and Laws
(Protag., Apol., Gorg.). Nor do the so-called Platonic ideas recovered
from a former state of existence affect his theory of mental improvement.
Still we observe in him the remains of the old Socratic doctrine, that true
knowledge must be elicited from within, and is to be sought for in ideas,
not in particulars of sense. Education, as he says, will implant a
The Republic |
