| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: of the girl's neglected childhood and queer continental
relegations, with straying squabbling Monte-Carlo-haunting parents;
the more invidious picture, above all, of her pecuniary
arrangement, still in force, with the Hammond Synges, who really,
though they never took her out--practically she went out alone--had
their hands half the time in her pocket. She had to pay for
everything, down to her share of the wine-bills and the horses'
fodder, down to Bertie Hammond Synge's fare in the "underground"
when he went to the City for her. She had been left with just
money enough to turn her head; and it hadn't even been put in
trust, nothing prudent or proper had been done with it. She could
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: say this: he cannot go back. His character and habits of thought
are established.
"To convict Judson Clark of the murder of Howard Lucas is to convict
a probably or at least possibly innocent man. To convict Richard
Livingstone of that crime is to convict a different man, innocent
of the crime, innocent of its memory, innocent of any single impulse
to lift his hand against a law of God or the state."
XXXII
For a month Haverly had buzzed with whispered conjectures. It knew
nothing, and yet somehow it knew everything. Doctor David was ill
at the seashore, and Dick was not with him. Harrison Miller, who
The Breaking Point |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was before his
feet. This is applicable to all philosophers. The philosopher is
unacquainted with the world; he hardly knows whether his neighbour is a man
or an animal. For he is always searching into the essence of man, and
enquiring what such a nature ought to do or suffer different from any
other. Hence, on every occasion in private life and public, as I was
saying, when he appears in a law-court or anywhere, he is the joke, not
only of maid-servants, but of the general herd, falling into wells and
every sort of disaster; he looks such an awkward, inexperienced creature,
unable to say anything personal, when he is abused, in answer to his
adversaries (for he knows no evil of any one); and when he hears the
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