| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: excursions and high-flying theories may interest, but they
cannot rule behaviour. Our faith is not the highest truth
that we perceive, but the highest that we have been able to
assimilate into the very texture and method of our thinking.
It is not, therefore, by flashing before a man's eyes the
weapons of dialectic; it is not by induction, deduction, or
construction; it is not by forcing him on from one stage of
reasoning to another, that the man will be effectually
renewed. He cannot be made to believe anything; but he can
be made to see that he has always believed it. And this is
the practical canon. It is when the reader cries, "Oh, I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: "You meant to kill yourself?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Godefroid, while the stranger passed his hand about his
neck again and again to feel the place where the rope had tightened on
it.
But for some slight bruises, the young man had been but little hurt.
His friend supposed that the nail had given way at once under the
weight of the body, and the terrible attempt had ended in a fall
without injury.
"And why, dear lad, did you try to kill yourself?"
"Alas!" said Godefroid, no longer restraining the tears that rolled
down his cheeks, "I heard the Voice from on high; it called me by
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: Racketing her rivets loose, smoke-stack white as snow,
All the coals adrift adeck, half the rails below,
Leaking like a lobster-pot, steering like a dray --
Out we took the ~Bolivar~, out across the Bay!
One by one the Lights came up, winked and let us by;
Mile by mile we waddled on, coal and fo'c'sle short;
Met a blow that laid us down, heard a bulkhead fly;
Left the ~Wolf~ behind us with a two-foot list to port.
Trailing like a wounded duck, working out her soul;
Clanging like a smithy-shop after every roll;
Verses 1889-1896 |
