| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: every change. Propagated at first by men of the school of Locke, it
became at last a protest against the materialism of that school, on
behalf of all that is, or calls itself, supernatural and mysterious.
Abjuring, and honestly, all politics, it found itself sucked into
the political whirlpool in spite of itself, as all human interests
which have any life in them must be at last. It became an active
promoter of the Revolution; then it helped to destroy the
Revolution, when that had, under Napoleon, become a levelling
despotism; then it helped, as actively, to keep revolutionary
principles alive, after the reaction of 1815:--a Protean
institution, whose power we in England are as apt to undervalue as
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: wool, or the piece of cloth which she is weaving, are at your disposal: I
am sure that there is nothing to hinder you from touching her wooden
spathe, or her comb, or any other of her spinning implements.
Nay, Socrates, he replied, laughing; not only does she hinder me, but I
should be beaten if I were to touch one of them.
Well, I said, this is amazing. And did you ever behave ill to your father
or your mother?
No, indeed, he replied.
But why then are they so terribly anxious to prevent you from being happy,
and doing as you like?--keeping you all day long in subjection to another,
and, in a word, doing nothing which you desire; so that you have no good,
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: "Yes--distinctly."
Granice had felt a return of confidence since he had enlisted the
interest of the Explorer's "smartest" reporter. If there were
moments when he hardly believed his own story, there were others
when it seemed impossible that every one should not believe it;
and young Peter McCarren, peering, listening, questioning,
jotting down notes, inspired him with an exquisite sense of
security. McCarren had fastened on the case at once, "like a
leech," as he phrased it--jumped at it, thrilled to it, and
settled down to "draw the last drop of fact from it, and had not
let go till he had." No one else had treated Granice in that
|
