| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: "That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?" I suggested.
Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.
"England at present is the web," he replied. "The spider will be waiting.
Petrie, I sometimes despair. Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd.
You ought to see his house at Finchley. A low, squat place completely
hemmed in by trees. Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle.
Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is working and eating
(and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby's
auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus.
He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, and Heaven only knows
what other strange people!"
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: with that, but to further saddle oneself with the duty of providing
the rest of the community with whatever they may be pleased to want.
That, at the cost of much personal enjoyment, a man should put himself
at the head of a state, and then, if he fail to carry through every
jot and tittle of that state's desire, be held to criminal account,
does seem to me the very extravagance of folly. Why, bless me! states
claim to treat their rulers precisely as I treat my domestic slaves. I
expect my attendants to furnish me with an abundance of necessaries,
but not to lay a finger on one of them themselves. So these states
regard it as the duty of a ruler to provide them with all the good
things imaginable, but to keep his own hands off them all the
The Memorabilia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: benighted. They look full of discrimination, while I alone am dull
and confused. I seem to be carried about as on the sea, drifting as
if I had nowhere to rest. All men have their spheres of action, while
I alone seem dull and incapable, like a rude borderer. (Thus) I alone
am different from other men, but I value the nursing-mother (the Tao).
21. The grandest forms of active force
From Tao come, their only source.
Who can of Tao the nature tell?
Our sight it flies, our touch as well.
Eluding sight, eluding touch,
The forms of things all in it crouch;
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