| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Will you close your hatch!" demanded Bradley. "You fools will
have yourselves scared to death in a minute. Now go to sleep."
But there was little sleep in camp that night until utter
exhaustion overtook the harassed men toward morning; nor was
there any return of the weird creature that had set the nerves of
each of them on edge.
The following forenoon the party reached the base of the barrier
cliffs and for two days marched northward in an effort to
discover a break in the frowning abutment that raised its rocky
face almost perpendicularly above them, yet nowhere was there the
slightest indication that the cliffs were scalable.
Out of Time's Abyss |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: seems not to have observed that this alteration is merely verbal and does
not in any degree affect the nature of things. Still less did he remark
that he was arguing from the necessary imperfection of language against the
most certain facts. And here, again, we may find a parallel with the
ancients. He goes beyond facts in his scepticism, as they did in their
idealism. Like the ancient Sophists, he relegates the more important
principles of ethics to custom and probability. But crude and unmeaning as
this philosophy is, it exercised a great influence on his successors, not
unlike that which Locke exercised upon Berkeley and Berkeley upon Hume
himself. All three were both sceptical and ideal in almost equal degrees.
Neither they nor their predecessors had any true conception of language or
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: the black walls were standing; the two poor horses that could not be got out
were buried under the burnt rafters and tiles.
17 John Manly's Talk
The rest of our journey was very easy, and a little after sunset
we reached the house of my master's friend. We were taken into a clean,
snug stable; there was a kind coachman, who made us very comfortable,
and who seemed to think a good deal of James when he heard about the fire.
"There is one thing quite clear, young man," he said, "your horses know
who they can trust; it is one of the hardest things in the world
to get horses out of a stable when there is either fire or flood.
I don't know why they won't come out, but they won't -- not one in twenty."
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