| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: than all, I was jeered at for my pretended love of the stars and
forbidden to stay in the garden after dark.
Such tyrannical restrains intensify a passion in the hearts of
children even more than in those of men; children think of nothing but
the forbidden thing, which then becomes irresistibly attractive to
them. I was often whipped for my star. Unable to confide in my kind, I
told it all my troubles in that delicious inward prattle with which we
stammer our first ideas, just as once we stammered our first words. At
twelve years of age, long after I was at school, I still watched that
star with indescribable delight,--so deep and lasting are the
impressions we receive in the dawn of life.
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: that clarification of thought and knowledge which is philosophy; and
finally, the progressive enlargement and development of the racial
life under these lights, so that God may work through a continually
better body of humanity and through better and better equipped
minds, that he and our race may increase for ever, working
unendingly upon the development of the powers of life and the
mastery of the blind forces of matter throughout the deeps of space.
He sets out with us, we are persuaded, to conquer ourselves and our
world and the stars. And beyond the stars our eyes can as yet see
nothing, our imaginations reach and fail. Beyond the limits of our
understanding is the veiled Being of Fate, whose face is hidden from
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: continued thinking from early dawn until noon--there he stood fixed in
thought; and at noon attention was drawn to him, and the rumour ran through
the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking about
something ever since the break of day. At last, in the evening after
supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should explain that this was not
in winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in the open air
that they might watch him and see whether he would stand all night. There
he stood until the following morning; and with the return of light he
offered up a prayer to the sun, and went his way (compare supra). I will
also tell, if you please--and indeed I am bound to tell--of his courage in
battle; for who but he saved my life? Now this was the engagement in which
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