| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: background of possibilities it goes with. Let our common
experiences be enveloped in an eternal moral order; let our
suffering have an immortal significance; let Heaven smile upon
the earth, and deities pay their visits; let faith and hope be
the atmosphere which man breathes in;--and his days pass by with
zest; they stir with prospects, they thrill with remoter values.
Place round them on the contrary the curdling cold and gloom and
absence of all permanent meaning which for pure naturalism and
the popular science evolutionism of our time are all that is
visible ultimately, and the thrill stops short, or turns rather
to an anxious trembling.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: 'Nonsense!' retorted Vasili Andreevich.
'It's not nonsense, Vasili Andreevich. It's the truth,'
replied Nikita. 'You can feel that the sledge is going over a
potato-field, and there are the heaps of vines which have been
carted here. It's the Zakharov factory land.'
'Dear me, how we have gone astray!' said Vasili Andreevich.
'What are we to do now?'
'We must go straight on, that's all. We shall come out
somewhere--if not at Zakharova, then at the proprietor's farm,'
said Nikita.
Vasili Andreevich agreed, and drove as Nikita had indicated.
Master and Man |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: unprotected, and alone. Suddenly, like a thing falling upon
me from without, came--fear.
With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through
the heather.
The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not
only of the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about
me. Such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had
that I ran weeping silently as a child might do. Once I had
turned, I did not dare to look back.
I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was
being played with, that presently, when I was upon the very
War of the Worlds |
