| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: is but its passing phase from a vast impersonal on the one hand to
an equally vast impersonal on the other. Thus seers preached in the
past; so modem science is hinting to-day. With us the idea seems the
bitter fruit of material philosophy; by them it was looked upon as
the fairest flower of their faith. What is dreaded now as the
impious suggestion of the godless four thousand years ago was
reverenced as a sacred tenet of religion.
Shorter even than his short threescore years and ten is that soul's
life of which man is directly cognizant. Bounded by two seemingly
impersonal states is the personal consciousness of which he is made
aware: the one the infantile existence that precedes his boyish
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: him but awake: the vision vanishes -- twofold
hunger and despair remain!
And to-morrow, it may be, I shall die! . . .
And there will not be left on earth one being who
has understood me completely. Some will con-
sider me worse, others, better, than I have been
in reality. . . Some will say: 'he was a good
fellow'; others: 'a villain.' And both epithets
will be false. After all this, is life worth the
trouble? And yet we live -- out of curiosity!
We expect something new. . . How absurd,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above
the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies'
wings, the strokes of the water spiders' legs, like oars
which had lifted their boat -- all these made audible
music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the
rush of its body parting the water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a
moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round,
himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort,
the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the
two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
