| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: must all be turned inside out. He finds himself lost in a labyrinth
of language. The same seems to be true of the thoughts it embodies.
The further he goes the more obscure the whole process becomes,
until, after long groping about for some means of orienting himself,
he lights at last upon the clue. This clue consists in "the survival
of the unfittest."
In the civilization of Japan we have presented to us a most
interesting case of partially arrested development; or, to speak
esoterically, we find ourselves placed face to face with a singular
example of a completed race-life. For though from our standpoint the
evolution of these people seems suddenly to have come to an end in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: mounting a certain canyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered
with great rocks, and echoing with the roar of a tumultuous
torrent. Cascade after cascade thundered and hung up its
flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces with the
wet wind of its descent. The trail was breakneck, and led to
famine-guarded deserts; it had been long since deserted for
more practicable routes; and it was now a part of the world
untrod from year to year by human footing. Judge of our
dismay, when turning suddenly an angle of the cliffs, we
found a bright bonfire blazing by itself under an impending
rock; and on the face of the rock, drawn very rudely with
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: her companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping
his short arms into his expensive overcoat.
"Wait a minute--you've got to let me walk home with you," he
said.
Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of
his change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue
again. As she led the way westward past a long line of areas
which, through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed
with increasing candour the DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners,
Lily felt that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the
neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which she finally
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