| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: German gilt impostures. What would that other dentist, that
poser, that rider of bicycles, that courser of
greyhounds, say when he should see this marvellous molar run
out from McTeague's bay window like a flag of defiance? No
doubt he would suffer veritable convulsions of envy; would
be positively sick with jealousy. If McTeague could only
see his face at the moment!
For a whole hour the dentist sat there in his little
"Parlor," gazing ecstatically at his treasure, dazzled,
supremely content. The whole room took on a different
aspect because of it. The stone pug dog before the little
McTeague |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: This dreadful honour you both fear and hope -
Both all in vain: you fall below my scope.
The Lybian lion tears the roaring bull,
He does not harm the midge along the pool.
Lo! if so close this stands in your regard,
From some blind tap fish forth a drunken barn,
Who shall with charcoal, on the privy wall,
Immortalise your name for once and all.
IN LUPUM
BEYOND the gates thou gav'st a field to till;
I have a larger on my window-sill.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: was no better than a tadpole, not to speak of his fellow-men--would not
this have produced an overpowering effect? For if truth is only sensation,
and no man can discern another's feelings better than he, or has any
superior right to determine whether his opinion is true or false, but each,
as we have several times repeated, is to himself the sole judge, and
everything that he judges is true and right, why, my friend, should
Protagoras be preferred to the place of wisdom and instruction, and deserve
to be well paid, and we poor ignoramuses have to go to him, if each one is
the measure of his own wisdom? Must he not be talking 'ad captandum' in
all this? I say nothing of the ridiculous predicament in which my own
midwifery and the whole art of dialectic is placed; for the attempt to
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