| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tanach: Numbers 11: 12 Have I conceived all this people? have I brought them forth, that Thou shouldest say unto me: Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing-father carrieth the sucking child, unto the land which Thou didst swear unto their fathers?
Numbers 11: 13 Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they trouble me with their weeping, saying: Give us flesh, that we may eat.
Numbers 11: 14 I am not able to bear all this people myself alone, because it is too heavy for me.
Numbers 11: 15 And if Thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray Thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in Thy sight; and let me not look upon my wretchedness.'
Numbers 11: 16 And the LORD said unto Moses: 'Gather unto Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom thou knowest to be the elders of the people, and officers over them; and bring them unto the tent of meeting, that they may stand there with thee.
Numbers 11: 17 And I will come down and speak with thee there; and I will take of the spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone.
Numbers 11: 18 And say thou unto the people: Sanctify yourselves against to-morrow, and ye shall eat flesh; for ye have wept in the ears of the LORD, saying: Would that we were given flesh to eat! for it was well with us in Egypt; therefore the LORD will give you flesh, and ye shall eat.
The Tanach |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: He has rooms here; has had them coming on for thirty years now, and
they are filled with a prodigious accumulation of trash - stays, I
dare say, and powder-puffs, and such effeminate idiocy - to which
none could dispute his title, even suppose any one wanted to. We
had a perfect right to bid him go, and he had a perfect right to
reply, "Yes, I will go, but not without my stays and cravats. I
must first get together the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine chestsfull
of insufferable rubbish, that I have spent the last thirty years
collecting - and may very well spend the next thirty hours a-
packing of." And what should we have said to that?'
'By way of repartee?' I asked. 'Two tall footmen and a pair of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: and with a natural or even wild manner of treating his subject; also that
his mode of revealing the truth is by lights and shadows, and far-off and
opposing points of view, and not by dogmatic statements or definite
results.
The real difficulties arise out of the extreme subtlety of the work, which,
as Socrates says of the poem of Simonides, is a most perfect piece of art.
There are dramatic contrasts and interests, threads of philosophy broken
and resumed, satirical reflections on mankind, veils thrown over truths
which are lightly suggested, and all woven together in a single design, and
moving towards one end.
In the introductory scene Plato raises the expectation that a 'great
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