| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Why, it's a melon!" cried Trot delightedly, as
she saw what had caused the sailor to fall.
Cap'n Bill rose to his foot, for he was not at all
hurt, and examined the melon. Then he took his big
jackknife from his pocket and cut the melon open. It
was quite ripe and looked delicious; but the old man
tasted it before he permitted Trot to eat any. Deciding
it was good he gave her a big slice and then offered
the Ork some. The creature looked at the fruit somewhat
disdainfully, at first, but once he had tasted its
flavor he ate of it as heartily as did the others.
The Scarecrow of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: JACK HEMINGWAY, Her husband.
MAID.
A WICKED WOMAN
[Curtain rises on a conventional living room of a country house in
California. It is the Hemingway house at Santa Clara. The room
is remarkable for magnificent stone fireplace at rear centre. On
either side of fireplace are generous, diamond-paned windows.
Wide, curtained doorways to right and left. To left, front,
table, with vase of flowers and chairs. To right, front, grand
piano.]
[Curtain discovers LORETTA seated at piano, not playing, her back
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible
difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our
thoughts of an object, we need then only consider what
sensations, immediate or remote, we are conceivably to expect
from it, and what conduct we must prepare in case the object
should be true. Our conception of these practical consequences
is for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as
that conception has positive significance at all.
This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism.
Such a principle will help us on this occasion to decide, among
the various attributes set down in the scholastic inventory of
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