| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: was like the face of neither man nor beast, but a mere shock
of grey hair, with three shadowy over-archings to mark the eyes
and mouth.
"He has little nails," said this grisly creature in his hairy beard.
"It is well."
He threw my hand down, and instinctively I gripped my stick.
"Eat roots and herbs; it is His will," said the Ape-man.
"I am the Sayer of the Law," said the grey figure. "Here come
all that be new to learn the Law. I sit in the darkness and say
the Law."
"It is even so," said one of the beasts in the doorway.
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken.
Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author,
general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness
of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more likely to
have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer
ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or panegyrical
orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those, again, which
have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later age, or the
slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or some
affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to have
originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert
the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated;
we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have
implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and
Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced
additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded;
and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne!
In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and
reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free--
if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which
we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble
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