| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: in one way, while some immutable and unsuspected law of physics
required that it be done in just the other way. I perceived by
this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been the life-long
education of my body and members. They were steeped in
ignorance; they knew nothing--nothing which it could profit them
to know. For instance, if I found myself falling to the right, I
put the tiller hard down the other way, by a quite natural
impulse, and so violated a law, and kept on going down. The law
required the opposite thing--the big wheel must be turned in the
direction in which you are falling. It is hard to believe this,
when you are told it. And not merely hard to believe it, but
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: 19. If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before
the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man
to whom the secret was told.
[Word for word, the translation here is: "If spy matters
are heard before [our plans] are carried out," etc. Sun Tzu's
main point in this passage is: Whereas you kill the spy himself
"as a punishment for letting out the secret," the object of
killing the other man is only, as Ch`en Hao puts it, "to stop his
mouth" and prevent news leaking any further. If it had already
been repeated to others, this object would not be gained. Either
way, Sun Tzu lays himself open to the charge of inhumanity,
The Art of War |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: particular attentions in which there is always something of
affectation. There were glances of forced gaiety, which seemed the
efforts of persons endeavoring to deceive themselves. Jules had
involuntary doubts, his wife had positive fears. Still, sure of each
other, they had slept. Was this strained condition the effect of a
want of faith, or was it only a memory of their nocturnal scene? They
did not know themselves. But they loved each other so purely that the
impression of that scene, both cruel and beneficent, could not fail to
leave its traces in their souls; both were eager to make those traces
disappear, each striving to be the first to return to the other, and
thus they could not fail to think of the cause of their first
Ferragus |
