| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: qualities; but not if a person wanted to prove of me that I was many and
also one. When he wanted to show that I was many he would say that I have
a right and a left side, and a front and a back, and an upper and a lower
half, for I cannot deny that I partake of multitude; when, on the other
hand, he wants to prove that I am one, he will say, that we who are here
assembled are seven, and that I am one and partake of the one. In both
instances he proves his case. So again, if a person shows that such things
as wood, stones, and the like, being many are also one, we admit that he
shows the coexistence of the one and many, but he does not show that the
many are one or the one many; he is uttering not a paradox but a truism.
If however, as I just now suggested, some one were to abstract simple
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: shape in the sunshine.
These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human energy on barren
spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, the incredible facility
of doing mischief; two strong games played out, twice won, and then
twice lost; the hatred of a statesman--a blockhead with a painted face
and a wig, but in whom the world believed--all these things, great and
small, had not crushed, but for the moment had dashed Marcas. In the
days when money had come into his hands, his fingers had not clutched
it; he had allowed himself the exquisite pleasure of sending it all to
his family--to his sisters, his brothers, his old father. Like
Napoleon in his fall, he asked for no more than thirty sous a day, and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: and this continued till the latter end of August and the beginning of
September.
But then the case altered quite; the distemper abated in the west and
north-west parishes, and the weight of the infection lay on the city and
the eastern suburbs, and the Southwark side, and this in a frightful
manner.
Then, indeed, the city began to look dismal, shops to be shut, and the
streets desolate. In the High Street, indeed, necessity made people stir
abroad on many occasions; and there would be in the middle of the
day a pretty many people, but in the mornings and evenings scarce any
to be seen, even there, no, not in Cornhill and Cheapside.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
