| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: literature, or because no further differentiation of them was required for
the intelligibility of language. So not without admixture and confusion
and displacement and contamination of sounds and the meanings of words, a
lower stage of language passes into a higher. Thus far we can see and no
further. When we ask the reason why this principle of analogy prevails in
all the vast domain of language, there is no answer to the question; or no
other answer but this, that there are innumerable ways in which, like
number, analogy permeates, not only language, but the whole world, both
visible and intellectual. We know from experience that it does not (a)
arise from any conscious act of reflection that the accusative of a Latin
noun in 'us' should end in 'um;' nor (b) from any necessity of being
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Koran: And we established the people of Israel with a sure establishment,
and we provided them with good things; nor did they disagree until
there came to them the knowledge. Verily, thy Lord shall decide
between them on the resurrection day concerning that whereon they
did dispute.
And if thou art in doubt of that which we have sent down unto
thee, ask those who read the Book before thee; verily, the truth is
come to thee from thy Lord, be not then of those who are in doubt. And
be not of those who say the signs of God are lies, or thou wilt be
of those who lose! Verily, those against whom God's word is pronounced
will not believe, even though there come to them every sign, until
The Koran |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and
I knew no more than the man in the moon about my only occupation.
At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another
floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with
washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their broad
jokes are about all I remember of the place. I could look up my
history-books, if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or
two; for it figured rather largely in the English wars. But I
prefer to mention a girls' boarding-school, which had an interest
for us because it was a girls' boarding-school, and because we
imagined we had rather an interest for it. At least - there were
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