| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: found a sharper and sharper pang in the imagination of her
darkness; for never so much as in these weeks had his rites been
real, never had his gathered company seemed so to respond and even
to invite. He lost himself in the large lustre, which was more and
more what he had from the first wished it to be - as dazzling as
the vision of heaven in the mind of a child. He wandered in the
fields of light; he passed, among the tall tapers, from tier to
tier, from fire to fire, from name to name, from the white
intensity of one clear emblem, of one saved soul, to another. It
was in the quiet sense of having saved his souls that his deep
strange instinct rejoiced. This was no dim theological rescue, no
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: them. Imagination is often at war with reason and fact. The concentration
of the mind on a single object, or on a single aspect of human nature,
overpowers the orderly perception of the whole. Yet the feelings too bring
truths home to the minds of many who in the way of reason would be
incapable of understanding them. Reflections of this kind may have been
passing before Plato's mind when he describes the poet as inspired, or
when, as in the Apology, he speaks of poets as the worst critics of their
own writings--anybody taken at random from the crowd is a better
interpreter of them than they are of themselves. They are sacred persons,
'winged and holy things' who have a touch of madness in their composition
(Phaedr.), and should be treated with every sort of respect (Republic), but
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: shall say you a part of him and of his folk, after that I have seen
the manner and the ordinance full many a time. And whoso that will
may lieve me if he will, and whoso will not, may leave also. For I
wot well, if any man hath been in those countries beyond, though he
have not been in the place where the great Chan dwelleth, he shall
hear speak of him so much marvellous thing, that he shall not trow
it lightly. And truly, no more did I myself, till I saw it. And
those that have been in those countries and in the great Chan's
household know well that I say sooth. And therefore I will not
spare for them, that know not ne believe not but that that they
see, for to tell you a part of him and of his estate that he
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