| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: can study it with ease, particularly during the phase between
the last quarter and the new moon, because then the shadows are
thrown lengthways from east to west, allowing them to measure
the heights.
This Copernicus forms the most important of the radiating
system, situated in the southern hemisphere, according to Tycho
Brahe. It rises isolated like a gigantic lighthouse on that
portion of the "Sea of Clouds," which is bounded by the "Sea of
Tempests," thus lighting by its splendid rays two oceans at
a time. It was a sight without an equal, those long luminous
trains, so dazzling in the full moon, and which, passing the
From the Earth to the Moon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: therefore the question can hardly be imagined to have escaped him. On the
other hand it may be urged that the further step, however simple and
obvious, is just what Plato often seems to be ignorant of, and that as
there is no limit to his insight, there is also no limit to the blindness
which sometimes obscures his intelligence (compare the construction of
solids out of surfaces in his account of the creation of the world, or the
attraction of similars to similars). Further, Mr. Grote supposes, not that
(Greek) means 'revolving,' or that this is the sense in which Aristotle
understood the word, but that the rotation of the earth is necessarily
implied in its adherence to the cosmical axis. But (a) if, as Mr Grote
assumes, Plato did not see that the rotation of the earth on its axis and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: the pages before me. Shall the story of Ahab king of Samaria profit us
when we know not the story of the Ahabs of our day; and the Naboths of our
land be stoned while we sit at east?' And he read to them portions of that
book. And certain rich men and women rose up and went out even while he
spoke, and his wife also went out.
"And when the service was ended and the man returned to his home, his wife
came to him weeping; and she said, 'Did you see how some of the most
wealthy and important people got up and went out this morning? Why did you
preach such a sermon, when we were just going to have the new wing added to
our house, and you thought they were going to raise your salary? You have
not a single Boer in your congregation! Why need you say the Chartered
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