| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: appropriate to call that man a wretched starveling beggar rather, who
through lack of means is driven to live by ugly shifts and base
contrivances.
[19] i.e. "to expend compassion on a man who, etc., were surely a
pathetic fallacy." Al. "Is not the man who has it in his power,
etc., far above being pitied?"
Now it is your tyrant who is perpetually driven to iniquitous
spoilation of temples and human beings, through chronic need of money
wherewith to meet inevitable expenses, since he is forced to feed and
support an army (even in times of peace) no less than if there were
actual war, or else he signs his own death-warrant.[20]
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: By sorrow and care's dismay, -
How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?
TO TIRZAH
Whate'er is born of mortal birth
Must be consumed with the earth,
To rise from generation free:
Then what have I to do with thee?
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: light, yet for the most part isolated from each other among
the arid and unfruitful wastes of Civilization, like glow-worms
in the dry grass of a summer night?
Since the first dim evolution of human self-consciousness
an immense period, as we have said--perhaps 30,000 years,
perhaps even more--has elapsed. Now, in the present
day this period is reaching its culmination, and though
it will not terminate immediately, its end is, so to speak,
in sight. Meanwhile, during all the historical age behind
us--say for the last 4,000 or 5,000 years--evidence has been
coming in (partly in the religious rites recorded, partly
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
