| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: She leaned back in her corner, and Waldo drove on slowly in the grey dawn
light along the level road. They passed the very milk-bush behind which so
many years before the old German had found the Kaffer woman. But their
thoughts were not with him that morning: they were the thoughts of the
young, that run out to meet the future, and labour in the present. At last
he touched her arm.
"What is it?"
"I feared you had gone to sleep and might be jolted out," he said; "you sat
so quietly."
"No; do not talk to me; I am not asleep;" but after a time she said
suddenly: "It must be a terrible thing to bring a human being into the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: by writers not sufficiently instructed or cautious, which in the
absence of hostile criticism might get accepted by the unthinking
reader along with the truths which they accompany. Most
scientific and philosophical works have their defects; and it is
fortunate that there is such a thing as dogmatic ardour in the
world, ever sharpening its wits to the utmost, that it may spy
each lurking inaccuracy and ruthlessly drag it to light. But this
useful spirit is wont to lead those who are inspired by it to
shoot beyond the mark, and after pointing out the errors of
others, to commit fresh mistakes of their own. In the skilful
criticism of M. Renan's work on the Apostles, in No. 29 of the
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: that two people should marry, and allowed them to see that they were
not expected to take part in the work which has to be done in order
that the world shall go on, but might absent themselves for a time.
They were accordingly left alone until they felt the silence as if,
playing in a vast church, the door had been shut on them.
They were driven to walk alone, and sit alone, to visit secret places
where the flowers had never been picked and the trees were solitary.
In solitude they could express those beautiful but too vast desires
which were so oddly uncomfortable to the ears of other men and women--
desires for a world, such as their own world which contained two
people seemed to them to be, where people knew each other intimately
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