| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: indulgence, and his advice to people who could not equally control
their appetite was to avoid taking what would allure them to eat if
not hungry or to drink if not thirsty.[7] Such things are ruinous to
the constitution, he said, bad for stomachs, brains, and soul alike;
or as he used to put it, with a touch of sarcasm,[8] "It must have
been by feasting men on so many dainty dishes that Circe produced her
pigs; only Odysseus through his continency and the 'promptings[9] of
Hermes' abstained from touching them immoderately, and by the same
token did not turn into a swine." So much for this topic, which he
touched thus lightly and yet seriously.
[5] {ei me ti daimonion eie}, "save under some divinely-ordained
The Memorabilia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: the scene of disappearance; but then I have no proof. THE TRAGIC
MUSE you announced to me as coming; I had already ordered it from a
Sydney bookseller: about two months ago he advised me that his
copy was in the post; and I am still tragically museless.
News, news, news. What do we know of yours? What do you care for
ours? We are in the midst of the rainy season, and dwell among
alarms of hurricanes, in a very unsafe little two-storied wooden
box 650 feet above and about three miles from the sea-beach.
Behind us, till the other slope of the island, desert forest,
peaks, and loud torrents; in front green slopes to the sea, some
fifty miles of which we dominate. We see the ships as they go out
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: cottagers and labourers, with their wives and children, who are
beggars in effect; I desire those politicians who dislike my
overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer, that
they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they
would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been
sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and
thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as
they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the
impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of
common sustenance, with neither house nor cloaths to cover them
from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable
A Modest Proposal |
