| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: Solomon; but I had positively forbidden Frederica complaining to Charles
Vernon or his wife, and they had therefore no pretence for interference;
though my impertinent sister, I believe, wanted only opportunity for doing
so. Everything, however, was going on calmly and quietly; and, though I
counted the hours of Sir James's stay, my mind was entirely satisfied with
the posture of affairs. Guess, then, what I must feel at the sudden
disturbance of all my schemes; and that, too, from a quarter where I had
least reason to expect it. Reginald came this morning into my dressing-room
with a very unusual solemnity of countenance, and after some preface
informed me in so many words that he wished to reason with me on the
impropriety and unkindness of allowing Sir James Martin to address my
Lady Susan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: individual; and on this point to adopt the common opinion of philosophers,
who say that the difference of greater and less holds only among the
accidents, and not among the forms or natures of individuals of the same
species.
I will not hesitate, however, to avow my belief that it has been my
singular good fortune to have very early in life fallen in with certain
tracks which have conducted me to considerations and maxims, of which I
have formed a method that gives me the means, as I think, of gradually
augmenting my knowledge, and of raising it by little and little to the
highest point which the mediocrity of my talents and the brief duration of
my life will permit me to reach. For I have already reaped from it such
Reason Discourse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: which is to receive perpetually and through its whole extent the
resemblances of all eternal beings ought to be devoid of any particular
form. Wherefore, the mother and receptacle of all created and visible and
in any way sensible things, is not to be termed earth, or air, or fire, or
water, or any of their compounds or any of the elements from which these
are derived, but is an invisible and formless being which receives all
things and in some mysterious way partakes of the intelligible, and is most
incomprehensible. In saying this we shall not be far wrong; as far,
however, as we can attain to a knowledge of her from the previous
considerations, we may truly say that fire is that part of her nature which
from time to time is inflamed, and water that which is moistened, and that
|
