| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: he had not anticipated danger. To inquire concerning his health
had been to show less sympathy than to remain silent, considering
the material interest he possessed in the woodman's life, and he
had, accordingly, made a point of avoiding Marty's house.
While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch him. It
was Marty herself, and she showed her distress by her
unconsciousness of a cropped poll.
"Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that tree,"
she said. "You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne? the tall
one in front of the house, that he thinks will blow down and kill
us. Can you come and see if you can persuade him out of his
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: to be despised. He says he knows how the youth are corrupted and who are
their corruptors. I fancy that he must be a wise man, and seeing that I am
the reverse of a wise man, he has found me out, and is going to accuse me
of corrupting his young friends. And of this our mother the state is to be
the judge. Of all our political men he is the only one who seems to me to
begin in the right way, with the cultivation of virtue in youth; like a
good husbandman, he makes the young shoots his first care, and clears away
us who are the destroyers of them. This is only the first step; he will
afterwards attend to the elder branches; and if he goes on as he has begun,
he will be a very great public benefactor.
EUTHYPHRO: I hope that he may; but I rather fear, Socrates, that the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Tillings of fields, walls, laws, and arms, and roads,
Dress and the like, all prizes, all delights
Of finer life, poems, pictures, chiselled shapes
Of polished sculptures- all these arts were learned
By practice and the mind's experience,
As men walked forward step by eager step.
Thus time draws forward each and everything
Little by little into the midst of men,
And reason uplifts it to the shores of light.
For one thing after other did men see
Grow clear by intellect, till with their arts
Of The Nature of Things |
