| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: a man with such fateful eyes. I could see he was moved in his
correct, restrained way, and in his own way, too, he tried to move
me with something that would be very simple. He told me that ever
since we became friends, we two, he had not an hour of continuous
sleep, unless perhaps when coming back dead-tired from outpost
duty, and that he longed to get back to it and yet hadn't the
courage to tear himself away from here. He was as simple as that.
He's a tres galant homme of absolute probity, even with himself. I
said to him: The trouble is, Don Juan, that it isn't love but
mistrust that keeps you in torment. I might have said jealousy,
but I didn't like to use that word. A parrot would have added that
The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey: the armies in the world couldn't comb the wild brakes of that
fifteen hundred miles of river. But the sway of the outlaw,
such as is enjoyed by these great leaders, will sooner or later
be past. The criminal element flock to the Southwest. But not
so thick and fast as the pioneers. Besides, the outlaws kill
themselves, and the ranchers are slowly rising in wrath, if not
in action. That will come soon. If they only had a leader to
start the fight! But that will come. There's talk of
Vigilantes, the same hat were organized in California and are
now in force in Idaho. So far it's only talk. But the time will
come. And the days of Cheseldine and Poggin are numbered."
The Lone Star Ranger |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: the soul, and are led by the belief in the one to a belief in the other.
The parallel, as Socrates would say, is not perfect, but agrees in as far
as the mind in either case is regarded as dependent on something above and
beyond herself. The analogy may even be pressed a step further: 'We are
more certain of our ideas of truth and right than we are of the existence
of God, and are led on in the order of thought from one to the other.' Or
more correctly: 'The existence of right and truth is the existence of God,
and can never for a moment be separated from Him.'
19. The main argument of the Phaedo is derived from the existence of
eternal ideas of which the soul is a partaker; the other argument of the
alternation of opposites is replaced by this. And there have not been
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