| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: enlarged its stock of ideas and methods of reasoning. Yet the germ of
modern thought is found in ancient, and we may claim to have inherited,
notwithstanding many accidents of time and place, the spirit of Greek
philosophy. There is, however, no continuous growth of the one into the
other, but a new beginning, partly artificial, partly arising out of the
questionings of the mind itself, and also receiving a stimulus from the
study of ancient writings.
Considering the great and fundamental differences which exist in ancient
and modern philosophy, it seems best that we should at first study them
separately, and seek for the interpretation of either, especially of the
ancient, from itself only, comparing the same author with himself and with
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite "false note."
--Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: the street formerly so well known to him, and now so strange in appearance,
and looked at the houses more attentively: most of them were of wood, slightly
put together; and many had a thatched roof.
"No--I am far from well," sighed he; "and yet I drank only one glass of punch;
but I cannot suppose it--it was, too, really very wrong to give us punch and
hot salmon for supper. I shall speak about it at the first opportunity. I have
half a mind to go back again, and say what I suffer. But no, that would be too
silly; and Heaven only knows if they are up still."
He looked for the house, but it had vanished.
"It is really dreadful," groaned he with increasing anxiety; "I cannot
recognise East Street again; there is not a single decent shop from one end to
Fairy Tales |
