| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: I interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the coast.
`Ah! So they talk of him down there,' he murmured to himself.
Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had,
an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the Company;
therefore I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said,
`very, very uneasy.' Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a
good deal, exclaimed, `Ah, Mr. Kurtz!' broke the stick of sealing-wax
and seemed dumfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted
to know `how long it would take to' . . . I interrupted him again.
Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too. I was getting savage.
`How can I tell?' I said. `I haven't even seen the wreck yet--
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: Answers are requested to the following questions:
Why do Ustyúsha, Masha, Alyóna, Peter, etc.,
have to bake, boil, sweep, empty slops, wait at table, while the
gentry have only to eat, gobble, quarrel, make slops, and eat
again?
LYOFF TOLSTOY.
My Aunt Tánya, when she was in a bad temper because the
coffee-pot had been spilt or because she had been beaten at
croquet, was in the habit of sending every one to the devil. My
father wrote the following story, "Susóitchik," about it.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: virtue; lovers of money take the place of lovers of honour; misers of
politicians; and, in time, political privileges are confined by law to the
rich, who do not shrink from violence in order to effect their purposes.
Thus much of the origin,--let us next consider the evils of oligarchy.
Would a man who wanted to be safe on a voyage take a bad pilot because he
was rich, or refuse a good one because he was poor? And does not the
analogy apply still more to the State? And there are yet greater evils:
two nations are struggling together in one--the rich and the poor; and the
rich dare not put arms into the hands of the poor, and are unwilling to pay
for defenders out of their own money. And have we not already condemned
that State in which the same persons are warriors as well as shopkeepers?
The Republic |
