| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: V
Temptation had arrived with Gaston, but was destined to make a longer
stay at Santa Ysabel del Mar. Yet it was perhaps a week before the priest
knew this guest was come to abide with him. The guest could be discreet,
could withdraw, was not at first importunate.
Sail away on the barkentine? A wild notion, to be sure! although fit
enough to enter the brain of such a young scape-grace. The Padre shook
his head and smiled affectionately when he thought of Gaston Villere. The
youth's handsome, reckless countenance would shine out, smiling, in his
memory, and he repeated Auber's old remark, "Is it the good Lord, or is
it merely the devil, that always makes me have a weakness for rascals?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: quite a unique value and quality in this present solitude.
He stretched out his legs on the opposite chair,
and looked lazily about him, with the feeling that at
last he had secured some leisure, and could think
undisturbed to his heart's content. There were nearly
two hours of unbroken quiet before him; and the mere
fact of his having stepped aside from the routine of
his duty to procure it; marked it in his thoughts as a
special occasion, which ought in the nature of things
to yield more than the ordinary harvest of mental profit.
Theron's musings were broken in upon from time to time
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: sentimentalist, in short, as we should call him nowadays.
But for the herd, Plotinus cannot say that there is anything divine in
them. And thus it gradually comes out in all Neoplatonist writings
which I have yet examined, that the Divine only exists in a man, in
proportion as he is conscious of its existence in him. From which
spring two conceptions of the Divine in man. First, is it a part of
him, if it is dependent for its existence on his consciousness of it?
Or is it, as Philo, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius would have held, as the
Christians held, something independent of him, without him, a Logos or
Word speaking to his reason and conscience? With this question Plotinus
grapples, earnestly, shrewdly, fairly. If you wish to see how he does
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