| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: and the indivisible, answering to the two spheres, of the planets and of
the world beyond them, all together moving around the earth, which is their
centre. To us there is a difficulty in apprehending how that which is at
rest can also be in motion, or that which is indivisible exist in space.
But the whole description is so ideal and imaginative, that we can hardly
venture to attribute to many of Plato's words in the Timaeus any more
meaning than to his mythical account of the heavens in the Republic and in
the Phaedrus. (Compare his denial of the 'blasphemous opinion' that there
are planets or wandering stars; all alike move in circles--Laws.) The
stars are the habitations of the souls of men, from which they come and to
which they return. In attributing to the fixed stars only the most perfect
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: touch.
"Then the painter of the long-boat was cut, and the
three boats, tied together, drifted clear of the ship. It
was just sixteen hours after the explosion when we aban-
doned her. Mahon had charge of the second boat, and I
had the smallest--the 14-foot thing. The long-boat
would have taken the lot of us; but the skipper said we
must save as much property as we could--for the under-
writers--and so I got my first command. I had two men
with me, a bag of biscuits, a few tins of meat, and a
breaker of water. I was ordered to keep close to the
Youth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: occasional clank of arms which announced the approach of
a body of warriors. The thought uppermost in her mind was
that it was my father returned from his expedition, but the
cunning of the Thark held her from headlong and precipitate
flight to greet him.
"Retreating into the shadows of a doorway she awaited the
coming of the cavalcade which shortly entered the avenue,
breaking its formation and thronging the thoroughfare
from wall to wall. As the head of the procession passed us
the lesser moon swung clear of the overhanging roofs and lit
up the scene with all the brilliancy of her wondrous light.
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