| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: impossible. And there is still a question to be asked about him: Which of
the patterns had the artificer in view when he made the world--the pattern
of the unchangeable, or of that which is created? If the world be indeed
fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have looked to
that which is eternal; but if what cannot be said without blasphemy is
true, then to the created pattern. Every one will see that he must have
looked to the eternal; for the world is the fairest of creations and he is
the best of causes. And having been created in this way, the world has
been framed in the likeness of that which is apprehended by reason and mind
and is unchangeable, and must therefore of necessity, if this is admitted,
be a copy of something. Now it is all-important that the beginning of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: the mountain region behind.
But in what direction would he turn? Would he pass in flight across
the plains of North Carolina, seeking the Atlantic Ocean? Or would he
head to the west to reach the Pacific? Perhaps he would seek, to the
south, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. When day came how should I
recognize which sea we were upon, if the horizon of water and sky
encircled us on every side?
Several hours passed; and how long they seemed to me! I made no
effort to find forgetfulness in sleep. Wild and incoherent thoughts
assailed me. I felt myself swept over worlds of imagination, as I was
swept through space, by an aerial monster. At the speed which the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: had a quaint air of having wandered far from their own
place; they looked abashed and homely, with their gables
and their creeping plants, their outside stairs and
running mill-streams; there were corners that smelt like
the end of the country garden where I spent my Aprils;
and the people stood to gossip at their doors, as they
might have done in Colinton or Cramond.
In a great measure we may, and shall, eradicate this
haunting flavour of the country. The last elm is dead in
Elm Row; and the villas and the workmen's quarters spread
apace on all the borders of the city. We can cut down
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