| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . .
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . .
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . .
and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . .
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: each having two coupled horses, relieved this wall of soldiers at its
two extremities.
The army of the Barbarians, on the contrary, had not been able to
preserve its line. Undulations and blanks were to be found through its
extravagant length; all were panting and out of breath with their
running.
The phalanx moved heavily along with thrusts from all its sarissae;
and the too slender line of the Mercenaries soon yielded in the centre
beneath the enormous weight.
Then the Carthaginian wings expanded in order to fall upon them, the
elephants following. The phalanx, with obliquely pointed lances, cut
Salammbo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: whole, is perhaps at present the most important element in our knowledge of
it. It is not impossible that some numerical laws may be found to have a
place in the relations of mind and matter, as in the rest of nature. The
old Pythagorean fancy that the soul 'is or has in it harmony' may in some
degree be realized. But the indications of such numerical harmonies are
faint; either the secret of them lies deeper than we can discover, or
nature may have rebelled against the use of them in the composition of men
and animals. It is with qualitative rather than with quantitative
differences that we are concerned in Psychology. The facts relating to the
mind which we obtain from Physiology are negative rather than positive.
They show us, not the processes of mental action, but the conditions of
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