| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: it has been thrust upon me to be first, and perhaps it might be thus
once more--what then, Umslopogaas?"
"Let the fruit ripen before you pluck it, Nada," he answered. "If you
love me and will wed me, it is enough."
"I pray that it may not be more than enough," she said, stretching out
her hand to him. "Listen, Umslopogaas: ask my father here what were
the words I spoke to him many years ago, before I was a woman, when,
with my mother, Macropha, I left him to go among the Swazi people. It
was after you had been borne away by the lion, Umslopogaas, I told my
father that I would marry no man all my life, because I loved only
you, who were dead. My father reproached me, saying that I must not
Nada the Lily |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: therefore the lover will not brook any superiority or equality on the part
of his beloved; he is always employed in reducing him to inferiority. And
the ignorant is the inferior of the wise, the coward of the brave, the slow
of speech of the speaker, the dull of the clever. These, and not these
only, are the mental defects of the beloved;--defects which, when implanted
by nature, are necessarily a delight to the lover, and when not implanted,
he must contrive to implant them in him, if he would not be deprived of his
fleeting joy. And therefore he cannot help being jealous, and will debar
his beloved from the advantages of society which would make a man of him,
and especially from that society which would have given him wisdom, and
thereby he cannot fail to do him great harm. That is to say, in his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: spits wholly from himself, and scorns to own any obligation or
assistance from without. Then he displays to you his great skill
in architecture and improvement in the mathematics. To all this
the bee, as an advocate retained by us, the Ancients, thinks fit to
answer, that, if one may judge of the great genius or inventions of
the Moderns by what they have produced, you will hardly have
countenance to bear you out in boasting of either. Erect your
schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the
materials be nothing but dirt, spun out of your own entrails (the
guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a
cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders' webs,
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