| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: annihilation, ready to fall into some devouring nowhere. Then, almost
simultaneously, he shouted, "Come back!" and she let go the handle of
the door. She turned round in peaceful desperation like one who
deliberately has thrown away the last chance of life; and, for a
moment, the room she faced appeared terrible, and dark, and safe--like
a grave.
He said, very hoarse and abrupt: "It can't end like this. . . . Sit
down;" and while she crossed the room again to the low-backed chair
before the dressing-table, he opened the door and put his head out to
look and listen. The house was quiet. He came back pacified, and
asked--
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: as in the case of a man we can tell what organs are vital, though we
are ignorant what the vital spark may be, so in our great cosmical
laws we can say in what their power resides, though we know not
really what they are. Whether mind be but a sublimated form of
matter, or, what amounts to the same thing, matter a menial kind of
mind, or whether, which seems less likely, it be a something
incomparable with substance, of one thing we are sure, the same laws
of heredity govern both. In each a like chain of continuity leads
from the present to the dim past, a connecting clue which we can
follow backward in imagination. Now what spontaneous variation is
to the material organism, imagination, apparently, is to the mental
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: sons were foals or calves, there would be no difficulty in finding some one
to put over them; we should hire a trainer of horses, or a farmer probably,
who would improve and perfect them in their own proper virtue and
excellence; but as they are human beings, whom are you thinking of placing
over them? Is there any one who understands human and political virtue?
You must have thought about the matter, for you have sons; is there any
one?' 'There is,' he said. 'Who is he?' said I; 'and of what country? and
what does he charge?' 'Evenus the Parian,' he replied; 'he is the man, and
his charge is five minae.' Happy is Evenus, I said to myself, if he really
has this wisdom, and teaches at such a moderate charge. Had I the same, I
should have been very proud and conceited; but the truth is that I have no
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