| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: from the servant, and, turning of a death-like paleness,
instantly ran out of the room. Elinor, who saw as plainly
by this, as if she had seen the direction, that it must
come from Willoughby, felt immediately such a sickness
at heart as made her hardly able to hold up her head,
and sat in such a general tremour as made her fear it
impossible to escape Mrs. Jenning's notice. That good lady,
however, saw only that Marianne had received a letter
from Willoughby, which appeared to her a very good joke,
and which she treated accordingly, by hoping, with a laugh,
that she would find it to her liking. Of Elinor's distress,
Sense and Sensibility |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: 'Incantations' of Jean Wier, will surely understand the explanation of
my sensations if I try to give it to you," replied Wilfrid. "If we
study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest
works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment--
giving to that word its exact significance. Man does not create
forces; he employs the only force that exists and which includes all
others namely Motion, the breath incomprehensible of the sovereign
Maker of the universe. Species are too distinctly separated for the
human hand to mingle them. The only miracle of which man is capable is
done through the conjunction of two antagonistic substances. Gunpowder
for instance is germane to a thunderbolt. As to calling forth a
Seraphita |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: not to be mentioned, and take it for granted that no decent person
would attempt to discuss sex. The three subjects are feared because
they rouse the crude passions which call for furious gratification in
murder and rapine at worst, and, at best, lead to quarrels and
undesirable states of consciousness.
Even when this excuse of bad manners, ill temper, and brutishness (for
that is what it comes to) compels us to accept it from those adults
among whom political and theological discussion does as a matter of
fact lead to the drawing of knives and pistols, and sex discussion
leads to obscenity, it has no application to children except as an
imperative reason for training them to respect other people's
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