| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: half naked, and sulky. He also feared an outbreak of temper on
the part of that pest of a woman he had hitherto managed to keep
tolerably quiet, thereby saving the remnants of his dilapidated
furniture. And he stood there before the closed door of the hut
in the blazing sunshine listening to the murmur of voices,
wondering what went on inside, wherefrom all the servant-maids
had been expelled at the beginning of the interview, and now
stood clustered by the palings with half-covered faces in a
chatter of curious speculation. He forgot himself there trying
to catch a stray word through the bamboo walls, till the captain
of the steamer, who had walked up with the girl, fearing a
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and external
evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there still
remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they
are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, or possibly
like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions
of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some contemporary
transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some
Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not
that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject
them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or
inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to
their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their
support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge.
After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of
trust or profit; they cannot purchase lands, or take leases;
neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either
civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds.
"At ninety, they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age
no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get,
without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to
still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking,
Gulliver's Travels |
