| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: remained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs unfed.
Mercedes nursed a special grievance--the grievance of sex. She was
pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days.
But the present treatment by her husband and brother was
everything save chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless.
They complained. Upon which impeachment of what to her was her
most essential sex-prerogative, she made their lives unendurable.
She no longer considered the dogs, and because she was sore and
tired, she persisted in riding on the sled. She was pretty and
soft, but she weighed one hundred and twenty pounds--a lusty last
straw to the load dragged by the weak and starving animals. She
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: contained in time is unreal--the succession of human thoughts as well as
the flux of sensations; there is no connecting link between (Greek) and
(Greek). Yet, on the other hand, we are conscious that knowledge is
independent of time, that truth is not a thing of yesterday or tomorrow,
but an 'eternal now.' To the 'spectator of all time and all existence' the
universe remains at rest. The truths of geometry and arithmetic in all
their combinations are always the same. The generations of men, like the
leaves of the forest, come and go, but the mathematical laws by which the
world is governed remain, and seem as if they could never change. The
ever-present image of space is transferred to time--succession is conceived
as extension. (We remark that Plato does away with the above and below in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: like a party for the Derby. Perhaps the reader remembers one
of the humorous devices of the deified Caligula: how he
encouraged a vast concourse of holiday-makers on to his bridge
over Baiae bay; and when they were in the height of their
enjoyment, turned loose the Praetorian guards among the
company, and had them tossed into the sea. This is no bad
miniature of the dealings of nature with the transitory race
of man. Only, what a chequered picnic we have of it, even
while it lasts! and into what great waters, not to be crossed
by any swimmer, God's pale Praetorian throws us over in the
end!
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