| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: the respiration is going in and out, and the fire, which is fast bound
within, follows it, and ever and anon moving to and fro, enters through the
belly and reaches the meat and drink, it dissolves them, and dividing them
into small portions and guiding them through the passages where it goes,
pumps them as from a fountain into the channels of the veins, and makes the
stream of the veins flow through the body as through a conduit.
Let us once more consider the phenomena of respiration, and enquire into
the causes which have made it what it is. They are as follows:--Seeing
that there is no such thing as a vacuum into which any of those things
which are moved can enter, and the breath is carried from us into the
external air, the next point is, as will be clear to every one, that it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: knight; ``think not that I will blench from thee.
---By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple
with these horrors that hover round me, as I have
done with mortal dangers, heaven or hell should
never say that I shrunk from the conflict!''
``Think on thy sins, Reginald Front-de-Buf,''
said the almost unearthly voice, ``on rebellion, on
rapine, on murder!---Who stirred up the licentious
John to war against his grey-headed father---against
his generous brother?''
``Be thou fiend, priest, or devil,'' replied Front-de-Buf,
Ivanhoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: found at lessons--still some other delicate way to ease me off.
Wasn't there light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude,
broke out with a specious glitter it had never yet quite worn?--
the fact that (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had
now come) it would be preposterous, with a child so endowed,
to forego the help one might wrest from absolute intelligence?
What had his intelligence been given him for but to save him?
Mightn't one, to reach his mind, risk the stretch of an angular
arm over his character? It was as if, when we were face
to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me the way.
The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed
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