| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: Then I went to one man after another, being not unconscious of the enmity
which I provoked, and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid
upon me,--the word of God, I thought, ought to be considered first. And I
said to myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out the
meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear!
--for I must tell you the truth--the result of my mission was just this: I
found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that
others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the
tale of my wanderings and of the 'Herculean' labours, as I may call them,
which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the
politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: The human mind is impelled by the small efforts of all mankind
combined together, not by the strenuous activity of certain men.
There is less perfection, but more abundance, in all the
productions of the arts. The ties of race, of rank, and of
country are relaxed; the great bond of humanity is strengthened.
If I endeavor to find out the most general and the most prominent
of all these different characteristics, I shall have occasion to
perceive, that what is taking place in men's fortunes manifests
itself under a thousand other forms. Almost all extremes are
softened or blunted: all that was most prominent is superseded by
some mean term, at once less lofty and less low, less brilliant
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: been in the East. In its intense and one-sided regard for
morality, Puritanism not only relegated the love for beauty to an
inferior place, but contemned and spat upon it, as something
sinful and degrading. Hence, the utter architectural impotence
which characterizes the Americans and the modern English; and
hence the bewildered ignorant way in which we ordinarily
contemplate pictures and statues. For two centuries we have been
removed from an artistic environment, and consequently can with
difficulty enter into the feelings of those who have all this
time been nurtured in love for art, and belief in art for its own
sake. These peculiarities, as Mr. Mill has ably pointed out, have
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
