| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: philosophers is really an anachronism. For they can hardly be said to have
generalized at all. They may be said more truly to have cleared up and
defined by the help of experience ideas which they already possessed. The
beginnings of thought about nature must always have this character. A true
method is the result of many ages of experiment and observation, and is
ever going on and enlarging with the progress of science and knowledge. At
first men personify nature, then they form impressions of nature, at last
they conceive 'measure' or laws of nature. They pass out of mythology into
philosophy. Early science is not a process of discovery in the modern
sense; but rather a process of correcting by observation, and to a certain
extent only, the first impressions of nature, which mankind, when they
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Koran: Say, 'Bring, then, a book from God which shall be a better guide
than both, and I will follow it, if ye do tell the truth!'
And if they cannot answer thee, then know that they follow their own
lusts; and who is more in error than he who follows his own lust
without guidance from God? verily, God guides not an unjust people!
And we caused the word to reach them, haply they may be mindful!
Those to whom we gave the Book before it, they believe therein;
and when it is recited to them they say, 'We believe in it as truth
from our Lord; verily, we were resigned before it came!' These shall
be given their hire twice over, for that they were patient, and
repelled evil with good, and of what we have bestowed upon them give
The Koran |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: better thing than life itself; and that is, to have done
something before you die, for which good men may honour you,
and God your Father smile upon your work.
Therefore we will believe - why should we not? - of these
same Argonauts of old, that they too were noble men, who
planned and did a noble deed; and that therefore their fame
has lived, and been told in story and in song, mixed up, no
doubt, with dreams and fables, and yet true and right at
heart. So we will honour these old Argonauts, and listen to
their story as it stands; and we will try to be like them,
each of us in our place; for each of us has a Golden Fleece
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