| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: was a Custom-House officer in his day, as well as I. It is a
good lesson -- though it may often be a hard one -- for a man who
has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank
among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of
the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find
how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all
that he achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that l
especially needed the lesson, either in the way of warning or
rebuke; but at any rate, I learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives
me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my
perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a
The Scarlet Letter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: night of the last Facino Cane, for my title passes to the Memmi. My
God! the murderer's punishment was not long delayed! /Ave Maria/," and
he repeated several prayers that I did not heed.
"We will go to Venice!" I said, when he rose.
"Then I have found a man!" he cried, with his face on fire.
I gave him my arm and went home with him. We reached the gates of the
Blind Asylum just as some of the wedding guests were returning along
the street, shouting at the top of their voices. He squeezed my hand.
"Shall we start to-morrow?" he asked.
"As soon as we can get some money."
"But we can go on foot. I will beg. I am strong, and you feel young
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: origin in direct possession by a higher spirit, expressing itself
in prophecy and warning; origin in automatic utterance
generally--these origins have been stock warrants for the truth
of one opinion after another which we find represented in
religious history. The medical materialists are therefore only
so many belated dogmatists, neatly turning the tables on their
predecessors by using the criterion of origin in a destructive
instead of an accreditive way.
They are effective with their talk of pathological origin only so
long as supernatural origin is pleaded by the other side, and
nothing but the argument from origin is under discussion. But
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