| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: sharks’ teeth, primitive bird skulls, and other bones of archaic
mammals such as palaeotheres, Xiphodons, Eohippi, Oreodons, and
titanotheres. There was nothing as recent as a mastodon, elephant,
true camel, deer, or bovine animal; hence Lake concluded that
the last deposits had occurred during the Oligocene Age, and that
the hollowed stratum had lain in its present dried, dead, and
inaccessible state for at least thirty million years.
On the
other hand, the prevalence of very early life forms was singular
in the highest degree. Though the limestone formation was, on
the evidence of such typical imbedded fossils as ventriculites,
At the Mountains of Madness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: place, I cannot omit. It was the next year after that great storm,
and but a little sooner in the year, being in August; I was at
Plymouth, and walking on the Hoo (which is a plain on the edge of
the sea, looking to the road), I observed the evening so serene, so
calm, so bright, and the sea so smooth, that a finer sight, I
think, I never saw. There was very little wind, but what was,
seemed to be westerly; and about an hour after, it blew a little
breeze at south-west, with which wind there came into the Sound
that night and the next morning a fleet of fourteen sail of ships
from Barbadoes, richly laden for London. Having been long at sea,
most of the captains and passengers came on shore to refresh
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: LACHES: I ought not to say that, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then you would not admit that sort of endurance to be courage--
for it is not noble, but courage is noble?
LACHES: You are right.
SOCRATES: Then, according to you, only the wise endurance is courage?
LACHES: True.
SOCRATES: But as to the epithet 'wise,'--wise in what? In all things
small as well as great? For example, if a man shows the quality of
endurance in spending his money wisely, knowing that by spending he will
acquire more in the end, do you call him courageous?
LACHES: Assuredly not.
|
