| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: all hours, but mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on
the Prado.
But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear:
"They are all Yankees there."
I murmured a confused "Of course."
Books are nothing. I discovered that I had never been aware before
that the Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact
only about ten years old. Of course. He was a South Carolinian
gentleman. I was a little ashamed of my want of tact. Meantime,
looking like the conventional conception of a fashionable reveller,
with his opera-hat pushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was
The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: testify for me, for thou art worthy of being brought forward as a
witness by Me. Is aught that is outside thy will either good or
bad? Do I hurt any man? Have I placed the good of each in the
power of any other than himself? What witness dost thou bear to
God?"
"I am in evil state, Master, I am undone! None careth for
me, none giveth me aught: all men blame, all speak evil of me."
Is this the witness thou wilt bear, and do dishonour to the
calling wherewith He hath called thee, because He hath done thee
so great honour, and deemed thee worthy of being summoned to bear
witness in so great a cause?
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: infinite,' seemed to be rapidly returning to their original chaos. The two
great speculative philosophies, which a century earlier had so deeply
impressed the mind of Hellas, were now degenerating into Eristic. The
contemporaries of Plato and Socrates were vainly trying to find new
combinations of them, or to transfer them from the object to the subject.
The Megarians, in their first attempts to attain a severer logic, were
making knowledge impossible (compare Theaet.). They were asserting 'the
one good under many names,' and, like the Cynics, seem to have denied
predication, while the Cynics themselves were depriving virtue of all which
made virtue desirable in the eyes of Socrates and Plato. And besides
these, we find mention in the later writings of Plato, especially in the
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