| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: real enough to make me get up for the purpose of having a look round.
On the hill a big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked corner
of the station-house. One of the agents with a picket of a few of
our blacks, armed for the purpose, was keeping guard over the ivory;
but deep within the forest, red gleams that wavered, that seemed
to sink and rise from the ground amongst confused columnar shapes
of intense blackness, showed the exact position of the camp
where Mr. Kurtz's adorers were keeping their uneasy vigil.
The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the air with muffled shocks
and a lingering vibration. A steady droning sound of many men chanting
each to himself some weird incantation came out from the black,
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: watch the stream of traffic across the bridges.
He then took me into a saloon, and while I drank made me note
that the floor was covered with coins sunk in cement. A
Hottentot would not have been guilty of this sort of barbarism.
The coins made an effect pretty enough, but the man who put them
there had no thought of beauty, and, therefore, he was a savage.
"Then my cab-driver showed me business blocks gay with signs and
studded with fantastic and absurd advertisements of goods, and
looking down the long street so adorned, it was as though each
vender stood at his door howling:--"For the sake of my money,
employ or buy of me, and me only!"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: speaking; I said to myself: 'Well, and what if Euthyphro does prove to me
that all the gods regarded the death of the serf as unjust, how do I know
anything more of the nature of piety and impiety? for granting that this
action may be hateful to the gods, still piety and impiety are not
adequately defined by these distinctions, for that which is hateful to the
gods has been shown to be also pleasing and dear to them.' And therefore,
Euthyphro, I do not ask you to prove this; I will suppose, if you like,
that all the gods condemn and abominate such an action. But I will amend
the definition so far as to say that what all the gods hate is impious, and
what they love pious or holy; and what some of them love and others hate is
both or neither. Shall this be our definition of piety and impiety?
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