| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: humiliated himself not for the sake of God but for the sake of
his pride. 'There now, am I not a splendid man not to want
anything?' That was why he could not tolerate the Abbot's
action. 'I have renounced everything for the glory of God, and
here I am exhibited like a wild beast!' 'Had you renounced
vanity for God's sake you would have borne it. Worldly pride is
not yet dead in you. I have thought about you, Sergius my son,
and prayed also, and this is what God has suggested to me. At
the Tambov hermitage the anchorite Hilary, a man of saintly life,
has died. He had lived there eighteen years. The Tambov Abbot
is asking whether there is not a brother who would take his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: Whitman's scrupulous and argumentative poet; he must do more
than waken up the sleepers to his words; he must persuade
them to look over the book and at life with their own eyes.
This side of truth is very present to Whitman; it is this
that he means when he tells us that "To glance with an eye
confounds the learning of all times." But he is not unready.
He is never weary of descanting on the undebatable conviction
that is forced upon our minds by the presence of other men,
of animals, or of inanimate things. To glance with an eye,
were it only at a chair or a park railing, is by far a more
persuasive process, and brings us to a far more exact
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: devoured; and seeds of many kinds in the crops of floating birds long
retain their vitality: peas and vetches, for instance, are killed by even
a few days' immersion in sea-water; but some taken out of the crop of a
pigeon, which had floated on artificial salt-water for 30 days, to my
surprise nearly all germinated.
Living birds can hardly fail to be highly effective agents in the
transportation of seeds. I could give many facts showing how frequently
birds of many kinds are blown by gales to vast distances across the ocean.
We may I think safely assume that under such circumstances their rate of
flight would often be 35 miles an hour; and some authors have given a far
higher estimate. I have never seen an instance of nutritious seeds passing
On the Origin of Species |
