| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: shows the tentative character of early endeavours to think. They have not
yet settled down into a single system. Plato uses them, though he also
criticises them; he acknowledges that both he and others are always talking
about them, especially about the Idea of Good; and that they are not
peculiar to himself (Phaedo; Republic; Soph.). But in his later writings
he seems to have laid aside the old forms of them. As he proceeds he makes
for himself new modes of expression more akin to the Aristotelian logic.
Yet amid all these varieties and incongruities, there is a common meaning
or spirit which pervades his writings, both those in which he treats of the
ideas and those in which he is silent about them. This is the spirit of
idealism, which in the history of philosophy has had many names and taken
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: That is not often vouch'd, while 'tis a making:
'Tis giuen, with welcome: to feede were best at home:
From thence, the sawce to meate is Ceremony,
Meeting were bare without it.
Enter the Ghost of Banquo, and sits in Macbeths place.
Macb. Sweet Remembrancer:
Now good digestion waite on Appetite,
And health on both
Lenox. May't please your Highnesse sit
Macb. Here had we now our Countries Honor, roof'd,
Were the grac'd person of our Banquo present:
Macbeth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: in various kinds of open wagons, KARIOLS for one, and STOLKJAERRES
for two, after we had left our comfortable gig behind us. We saw
the ancient dragon-gabled church of Burgund; and the delightful,
showery town of Bergen; and the gloomy cliffs of the Geiranger-Fjord
laced with filmy cataracts; and the bewitched crags of the Romsdal;
and the wide, desolate landscape of Jerkin; and a hundred other
unforgotten scenes. Somehow or other we went, (around and about,
and up and down, now on wheels, and now on foot, and now in a boat,)
all the way from Christiania to Throndhjem. My lady Graygown could
give you the exact itinerary, for she has been well brought up, and
always keeps a diary. All I know is, that we set out from one city
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