| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: village, and came at last to the bottom of the main ascent leading
to the Pentlands and my destination. I was some way up when the
fog began to lighten; a little farther, and I stepped by degrees
into a clear starry night, and saw in front of me, and quite
distinct, the summits of the Pentlands, and behind, the valley of
the Forth and the city of my late captivity buried under a lake of
vapour. I had but one encounter - that of a farm-cart, which I
heard, from a great way ahead of me, creaking nearer in the night,
and which passed me about the point of dawn like a thing seen in a
dream, with two silent figures in the inside nodding to the horse's
steps. I presume they were asleep; by the shawl about her head and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: Mene-a-Bien scratched his ear and looked behind him, but his new
comrades were out of sight.
Hulot and his command stopped at Ernee long enough to place the
wounded in the hospital of the little town, and then, without further
hindrance, they reached Mayenne. There the commandant cleared up his
doubts as to the action of the Chouans, for on the following day the
news of the pillage of the turgotine was received.
A few days later the government despatched to Mayenne so strong a
force of "patriotic conscripts," that Hulot was able to fill the ranks
of his brigade. Disquieting rumors began to circulate about the
insurrection. A rising had taken place at all the points where, during
The Chouans |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: healthy-mindedness of liberal Protestant circles to-day makes
mortification for mortification's sake repugnant to us. We can
no longer sympathize with cruel deities, and the notion that God
can take delight in the spectacle of sufferings self-inflicted in
his honor is abhorrent. In consequence of all these motives you
probably are disposed, unless some special utility can be shown
in some individual's discipline, to treat the general tendency to
asceticism as pathological.
Yet I believe that a more careful consideration of the whole
matter, distinguishing between the general good intention of
asceticism and the uselessness of some of the particular acts of
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