| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: enough ahead of these to reach the dangling cable you can rise at
my word and I can clamber to the deck at my leisure; but if one
of them emerges first into the enclosure you will know that I
shall never come, and you will rise quickly and trust to the Gods
of our ancestors to give you a fair breeze in the direction of a
more hospitable people."
Tara of Helium shook her head. "We will not desert you, panthan,"
she said.
Gahan, ignoring her reply, spoke above her head to Ghek. "Take
her to the craft moored within the enclosure," he commanded. "It
is our only hope. Alone, I may win to its deck; but have I to
The Chessmen of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: addressed to a crowd of men, women, and children, freemen and slaves. And
this is not much to our taste, for we have described it as having the
nature of flattery.
CALLICLES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: Very good. And what do you say of that other rhetoric which
addresses the Athenian assembly and the assemblies of freemen in other
states? Do the rhetoricians appear to you always to aim at what is best,
and do they seek to improve the citizens by their speeches, or are they
too, like the rest of mankind, bent upon giving them pleasure, forgetting
the public good in the thought of their own interest, playing with the
people as with children, and trying to amuse them, but never considering
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: intoxicated her, for she felt again her own headlong desire to throw
herself off the cliff and be drowned looking for a pearl brooch on a
beach. And the roar and the crackle repelled her with fear and
disgust, as if while she saw its splendour and power she saw too how it
fed on the treasure of the house, greedily, disgustingly, and she
loathed it. But for a sight, for a glory it surpassed everything in
her experience, and burnt year after year like a signal fire on a
desert island at the edge of the sea, and one had only to say "in love"
and instantly, as happened now, up rose Paul's fire again. And it sank
and she said to herself, laughing, "The Rayleys"; how Paul went to
coffee-houses and played chess.)
To the Lighthouse |
