| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: at the ships unburied, and unmourned--he whom I can never forget
so long as I am alive and my strength fails not? Though men
forget their dead when once they are within the house of Hades,
yet not even there will I forget the comrade whom I have lost.
Now, therefore, Achaean youths, let us raise the song of victory
and go back to the ships taking this man along with us; for we
have achieved a mighty triumph and have slain noble Hector to
whom the Trojans prayed throughout their city as though he were a
god."
On this he treated the body of Hector with contumely: he pierced
the sinews at the back of both his feet from heel to ancle and
The Iliad |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: glittering hieroglyph many square miles in extent; and when,
to borrow and debase an image, all the evening street-lamps
burst together into song! Such is the spectacle of the
future, preluded the other day by the experiment in Pall Mall.
Star-rise by electricity, the most romantic flight of
civilisation; the compensatory benefit for an innumerable
array of factories and bankers' clerks. To the artistic
spirit exercised about Thirlmere, here is a crumb of
consolation; consolatory, at least, to such of them as look
out upon the world through seeing eyes, and contentedly accept
beauty where it comes.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: man must know his letters. Of course, if not stone deaf, I must have
garnered that for a certain object knowledge of letters was important
to me, but the bare recognition of the fact, I fear, would not enable
me in any deeper sense to know my letters. So, too, at present I am
easily persuaded that if I am to direct my care aright in tillage I
must have a knowledge of the art of tillage. But the bare recognition
of the fact does not one whit provide me with the knowledge how I
ought to till. And if I resolved without ado to set about the work of
tilling, I imagine, I should soon resemble your physician going on his
rounds and visiting his patients without knowing what to prescribe or
what to do to ease their sufferings. To save me from the like
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