| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: Is not medicine, I said, the science of health?
True.
And suppose, I said, that I were asked by you what is the use or effect of
medicine, which is this science of health, I should answer that medicine is
of very great use in producing health, which, as you will admit, is an
excellent effect.
Granted.
And if you were to ask me, what is the result or effect of architecture,
which is the science of building, I should say houses, and so of other
arts, which all have their different results. Now I want you, Critias, to
answer a similar question about temperance, or wisdom, which, according to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: uncomprehended parts; like all Scots, realising daily and
hourly the sense of another will than ours and a perpetual
direction in the affairs of life. But the current of their
endeavours flowed in a more obvious channel. They had got on
so far; to get on further was their next ambition - to gather
wealth, to rise in society, to leave their descendants higher
than themselves, to be (in some sense) among the founders of
families. Scott was in the same town nourishing similar
dreams. But in the eyes of the women these dreams would be
foolish and idolatrous.
I have before me some volumes of old letters addressed to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: disjointed things to me - things which he repudiates vehemently
as soon as he gets a grip on himself again.
It will be hard
work deterring others from the great white south, and some of
our efforts may directly harm our cause by drawing inquiring notice.
We might have known from the first that human curiosity is undying,
and that the results we announced would be enough to spur others
ahead on the same age-long pursuit of the unknown. Lake’s reports
of those biological monstrosities had aroused naturalists and
paleontologists to the highest pitch, though we were sensible
enough not to show the detached parts we had taken from the actual
At the Mountains of Madness |
