| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: not matter if another woman bore it, if one had it to take care of." She
moved restlessly.
"Oh, no, I couldn't bear it to be hers. When I think of her I feel as if I
were dying; all my fingers turn cold; I feel dead. Oh, you were only his
friend; you don't know!"
The older spoke softly and quickly, "Don't you feel a little gentle to her
when you think she's going to be his wife and the mother of his child? I
would like to put my arms round her and touch her once, if she would let
me. She is so beautiful, they say."
"Oh, I could never bear to see her; it would kill me. And they are so
happy together today! He is loving her so!"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: the dumb stagnant heat of summer breaks out into thunder.
When Ole came staggering in, heavy with liquor, Canute rose at
once.
"Yensen," he said quietly, "I have come to see if you will let
me marry your daughter today."
"Today!" gasped Ole.
"Yes, I will not wait until tomorrow. I am tired of living alone."
Ole braced his staggering knees against the bedstead, and
stammered eloquently: "Do you think I will marry my daughter to a
drunkard? a man who drinks raw alcohol? a man who sleeps with
rattle snakes? Get out of my house or I will kick you out
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: from ideas to sense. This is a point of view from which the philosophy of
sensation presented great attraction to the ancient thinker. Amid the
conflict of ideas and the variety of opinions, the impression of sense
remained certain and uniform. Hardness, softness, cold, heat, etc. are not
absolutely the same to different persons, but the art of measuring could at
any rate reduce them all to definite natures (Republic). Thus the doctrine
that knowledge is perception supplies or seems to supply a firm standing
ground. Like the other notions of the earlier Greek philosophy, it was
held in a very simple way, without much basis of reasoning, and without
suggesting the questions which naturally arise in our own minds on the same
subject.
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