| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: company, and three years lance speisade; disdaining to receive a
halberd, as unbecoming my birth. Wherefore I was ultimately
promoted to be a fahndragger, as the High Dutch call it (which
signifies an ancient), in the King's Leif Regiment of Black-
Horse, and thereafter I arose to be lieutenant and ritt-master,
under that invincible monarch, the bulwark of the Protestant
faith, the Lion of the North, the terror of Austria, Gustavus the
Victorious."
"And yet, if I understand you, Captain Dalgetty,--I think that
rank corresponds with your foreign title of ritt-master--"
"The same grade preceesely," answered Dalgetty; "ritt-master
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: of them that want a fortune, whatever else you want.'
'I understand you, brother,' replies the lady very smartly; 'you
suppose I have the money, and want the beauty; but as times
go now, the first will do without the last, so I have the better
of my neighbours.'
'Well,' says the younger brother, 'but your neighbours, as you
call them, may be even with you, for beauty will steal a husband
sometimes in spite of money, and when the maid chances to be
handsomer than the mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a
market, and rides in a coach before her.'
I thought it was time for me to withdraw and leave them, and
Moll Flanders |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: --anein; for mekos has the meaning of greatness, and these two, mekos and
anein, make up the word mechane. But, as I was saying, being now at the
top of my bent, I should like to consider the meaning of the two words
arete (virtue) and kakia (vice); arete I do not as yet understand, but
kakia is transparent, and agrees with the principles which preceded, for
all things being in a flux (ionton), kakia is kakos ion (going badly); and
this evil motion when existing in the soul has the general name of kakia,
or vice, specially appropriated to it. The meaning of kakos ienai may be
further illustrated by the use of deilia (cowardice), which ought to have
come after andreia, but was forgotten, and, as I fear, is not the only word
which has been passed over. Deilia signifies that the soul is bound with a
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