| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: The Speech if it may be called one, is nothing better than
a wilful audacious libel against the truth, the common good,
and the existence of mankind; and is a formal and pompous
method of offering up human sacrifices to the pride of tyrants.
But this general massacre of mankind. is one of the privileges,
and the certain consequence of Kings; for as nature knows them NOT,
they know NOT HER, and although they are beings of our OWN creating,
they know not US, and are become the gods of their creators.
The Speech hath one good quality, which is, that it is not calculated
to deceive, neither can we, even if we would, be deceived by it.
Brutality and tyranny appear on the face of it. It leaves us at no loss:
Common Sense |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: hae; she had been passed from chief to chief; she had been fought
for and taken in war; perhaps, being so great a lady, she had sat
on the high place, and throned it there, alone of her sex, while
the drums were going twenty strong and the priests carried up the
blood-stained baskets of long-pig. And now behold her, out of that
past of violence and sickening feasts, step forth, in her age, a
quiet, smooth, elaborate old lady, such as you might find at home
(mittened also, but not often so well-mannered) in a score of
country houses. Only Vaekehu's mittens were of dye, not of silk;
and they had been paid for, not in money, but the cooked flesh of
men. It came in my mind with a clap, what she could think of it
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: beat a retreat, and, before they proceed, come to an understanding about
the 'high argument' of the one and the many.
Protarchus agrees to the proposal, but he is under the impression that
Socrates means to discuss the common question--how a sensible object can be
one, and yet have opposite attributes, such as 'great' and 'small,' 'light'
and 'heavy,' or how there can be many members in one body, and the like
wonders. Socrates has long ceased to see any wonder in these phenomena;
his difficulties begin with the application of number to abstract unities
(e.g.'man,' 'good') and with the attempt to divide them. For have these
unities of idea any real existence? How, if imperishable, can they enter
into the world of generation? How, as units, can they be divided and
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