| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: generation to generation as heirlooms. He is a dapper little
fellow, with bandy legs and pot belly, a red face, with a moist,
merry eye, and a little shock of gray hair behind. At the
opening of every club night he is called in to sing his
"Confession of Faith," which is the famous old drinking trowl
from "Gammer Gurton's Needle." He sings it, to be sure, with
many variations, as he received it from his father's lips; for it
has been a standing favorite at the Half-Moon and Bunch of
Grapes ever since it was written; nay, he affirms that his
predecessors have often had the honor of singing it before the
nobility and gentry at Christmas mummeries, when Little
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Koran: knowledge of, then obey them not; to me is your return, and I will
inform you of that which ye have done.
But those who believe and do right, we will make them enter
amongst the righteous.
And there are those among men who say, 'We believe in God!' but when
they are hurt in God's cause, they deem the trials of men like the
torment of God; but if help come from thy Lord they will say, 'Verily,
we were with you!' does not God know best what is in the breasts of
the worlds? God will surely know those who believe, and will surely
know the hypocrites.
And those who misbelieved said to those who believed, 'Follow our
The Koran |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: importance. Those writings which he cites without mentioning Plato, under
their own names, e.g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the Phaedo, etc.,
have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour. They may have been
supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in the case of
really great works, e.g. the Phaedo, this is not credible; those again
which are quoted but not named, are still more defective in their external
credentials. There may be also a possibility that Aristotle was mistaken,
or may have confused the master and his scholars in the case of a short
writing; but this is inconceivable about a more important work, e.g. the
Laws, especially when we remember that he was living at Athens, and a
frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during the last twenty years of
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