| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: which it rises). Hence princes and kings call themselves 'Orphans,'
'Men of small virtue,' and as 'Carriages without a nave.' Is not this
an acknowledgment that in their considering themselves mean they see
the foundation of their dignity? So it is that in the enumeration of
the different parts of a carriage we do not come on what makes it
answer the ends of a carriage. They do not wish to show themselves
elegant-looking as jade, but (prefer) to be coarse-looking as an
(ordinary) stone.
40. 1. The movement of the Tao
By contraries proceeds;
And weakness marks the course
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large,
halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a
dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At
one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again,
but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by
this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the
tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to
the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very
cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to
reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands
until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was
The Time Machine |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: Church House, Northiam: Charles the second, then a child of three,
among the number. Through the eyes of the boy we have glimpses of
the life that followed: of Admiral and Mrs. Buckner driving up
from Windsor in a coach and six, two post-horses and their own
four; of the house full of visitors, the great roasts at the fire,
the tables in the servants' hall laid for thirty or forty for a
month together; of the daily press of neighbours, many of whom,
Frewens, Lords, Bishops, Batchellors, and Dynes, were also
kinsfolk; and the parties 'under the great spreading chestnuts of
the old fore court,' where the young people danced and made merry
to the music of the village band. Or perhaps, in the depth of
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