| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: part so rough and narrow that they came single and led their
horses by the reins. The first was a great, red-headed
gentleman, of an imperious and flushed face, who carried his hat
in his hand and fanned himself, for he was in a breathing heat.
The second, by his decent black garb and white wig, I correctly
took to be a lawyer. The third was a servant, and wore some part
of his clothes in tartan, which showed that his master was of a
Highland family, and either an outlaw or else in singular good
odour with the Government, since the wearing of tartan was
against the Act. If I had been better versed in these things, I
would have known the tartan to be of the Argyle (or Campbell)
Kidnapped |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: well. And it would be very interesting, coming into contact with the
races below us. What sweet little things the inch-high bull-dogs would
be! I doubt if even Muriel would run away from one of them!"
"Don't you think we ought to have a crescendo series, as well?" said
Lady Muriel. "Only fancy being a hundred yards high!
One could use an elephant as a paper-weight, and a crocodile as a pair
of scissors!"
"And would you have races of different sizes communicate with one
another?" I enquired. "Would they make war on one another, for instance,
or enter into treaties?"
"War we must exclude, I think. When you could crush a whole nation
Sylvie and Bruno |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: words everywhere in every degree of clearness and consistency, fading away
in dreams and more like pictures, rapidly succeeding one another in our
waking thoughts, attaining a greater distinctness and consecutiveness in
speech, and a greater still in writing, taking the place of one another
when we try to become emancipated from their influence. For in all
processes of the mind which are conscious we are talking to ourselves; the
attempt to think without words is a mere illusion,--they are always
reappearing when we fix our thoughts. And speech is not a separate
faculty, but the expression of all our faculties, to which all our other
powers of expression, signs, looks, gestures, lend their aid, of which the
instrument is not the tongue only, but more than half the human frame.
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