| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: much younger, an insignificant person, living off the Brompton Road). She
opened bedroom windows. She shut doors. (So she tried to start the tune
of Mrs Ramsay in her head.) Arriving late at night, with a light tap on
one's bedroom door, wrapped in an old fur coat (for the setting of her
beauty was always that--hasty, but apt), she would enact again whatever it
might be--Charles Tansley losing his umbrella; Mr Carmichael snuffling and
sniffing; Mr Bankes saying, "The vegetable salts are lost." All this she
would adroitly shape; even maliciously twist; and, moving over to the
window, in pretence that she must go,--it was dawn, she could see the sun
rising,--half turn back, more intimately, but still always laughing,
insist that she must, Minta must, they all must marry, since in the whole
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: exterior), and times when we were full of the absurdest little
solicitudes about our prospects. There were times when one surveyed
the whole world of men as if it was a little thing at one's feet,
and by way of contrast I remember once lying in bed--it must have
been during this holiday, though I cannot for the life of me fix
where--and speculating whether perhaps some day I might not be a
K. C. B., Sir Richard Remington, K. C. B., M. P.
But the big style prevailed. . . .
We could not tell from minute to minute whether we were planning for
a world of solid reality, or telling ourselves fairy tales about
this prospect of life. So much seemed possible, and everything we
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: responsibility of such a prosecution, he must have been perfectly informed
of the nature of piety and impiety; and as he is going to be tried for
impiety himself, he thinks that he cannot do better than learn of Euthyphro
(who will be admitted by everybody, including the judges, to be an
unimpeachable authority) what piety is, and what is impiety. What then is
piety?
Euthyphro, who, in the abundance of his knowledge, is very willing to
undertake all the responsibility, replies: That piety is doing as I do,
prosecuting your father (if he is guilty) on a charge of murder; doing as
the gods do--as Zeus did to Cronos, and Cronos to Uranus.
Socrates has a dislike to these tales of mythology, and he fancies that
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