| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: SOCRATES: And would you rather have a horse of such a temper that you may
ride him ill voluntarily or involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: I would rather have a horse which I could ride ill voluntarily.
SOCRATES: That would be the better horse?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then with a horse of better temper, vicious actions would be
produced voluntarily; and with a horse of bad temper involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And that would be true of a dog, or of any other animal?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is it better to possess the mind of an archer who
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: hissing of an enormous tea-urn, and at the same time breaths of
cool air began to reach me from the direction of the summit. At
length I understood. It was blowing stiffly from the south upon
the other slope of the Lozere, and every step that I took I was
drawing nearer to the wind.
Although it had been long desired, it was quite unexpectedly at
last that my eyes rose above the summit. A step that seemed no way
more decisive than many other steps that had preceded it - and,
'like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, he stared on the
Pacific,' I took possession, in my own name, of a new quarter of
the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf rampart I had
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: them simply by experience of the hurtfulness of particular crimes and
disputes, would by this process come to be possessed of less perfect
institutions than those which, from the commencement of their association
as communities, have followed the appointments of some wise legislator. It
is thus quite certain that the constitution of the true religion, the
ordinances of which are derived from God, must be incomparably superior to
that of every other. And, to speak of human affairs, I believe that the
pre-eminence of Sparta was due not to the goodness of each of its laws in
particular, for many of these were very strange, and even opposed to good
morals, but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual,
they all tended to a single end. In the same way I thought that the
Reason Discourse |
