| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: science may not bring to light fresh substitutes for alcohol,
opium, and the rest; and give the white races, in that state of
effeminate and godless quasi-civilisation which I sometimes fear
is creeping upon them, fresh means of destroying themselves
delicately and pleasantly off the face of the earth.
It is said by some that drunkenness is on the increase in this
island. I have no trusty proof of it: but I can believe it
possible; for every cause of drunkenness seems on the increase.
Overwork of body and mind; circumstances which depress health;
temptation to drink, and drink again, at every corner of the
streets; and finally, money, and ever more money, in the hands of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: nodded again, and so they became acquaintances, and then they were friends,
although they had never spoken to each other--but that made no difference. The
little boy heard his parents say, "The old man opposite is very well off, but
he is so very, very lonely!"
The Sunday following, the little boy took something, and wrapped it up in a
piece of paper, went downstairs, and stood in the doorway; and when the man
who went on errands came past, he said to him--
"I say, master! will you give this to the old man over the way from me? I have
two pewter soldiers--this is one of them, and he shall have it, for I know he
is so very, very lonely."
And the old errand man looked quite pleased, nodded, and took the pewter
Fairy Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: birthplace; then, considering our ignorance with respect to former climatal
and geographical changes and various occasional means of transport, the
belief that this has been the universal law, seems to me incomparably the
safest.
In discussing this subject, we shall be enabled at the same time to
consider a point equally important for us, namely, whether the several
distinct species of a genus, which on my theory have all descended from a
common progenitor, can have migrated (undergoing modification during some
part of their migration) from the area inhabited by their progenitor. If
it can be shown to be almost invariably the case, that a region, of which
most of its inhabitants are closely related to, or belong to the same
On the Origin of Species |
