| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: we are at home and by ourselves,--the manner in which thought passes into
act, the conflict of passion and reason in many stages, the transition from
sensuality to love or sentiment and from earthly love to heavenly, the slow
and silent influence of habit, which little by little changes the nature of
men, the sudden change of the old nature of man into a new one, wrought by
shame or by some other overwhelming impulse. These are the greater
phenomena of mind, and he who has thought of them for himself will live and
move in a better-ordered world, and will himself be a better-ordered man.
At the other end of the 'globus intellectualis,' nearest, not to earth and
sense, but to heaven and God, is the personality of man, by which he holds
communion with the unseen world. Somehow, he knows not how, somewhere, he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: force of my intelligence.
I had three days' provisions with me and my flask was full. But I
could not remain alone for long. Should I go up or down?
Up, of course; up continually.
I must thus arrive at the point where I had left the stream, that
fatal turn in the road. With the stream at my feet, I might hope to
regain the summit of Snæfell.
Why had I not thought of that sooner? Here was evidently a chance of
safety. The most pressing duty was to find out again the course of
the Hansbach. I rose, and leaning upon my iron-pointed stick I
ascended the gallery. The slope was rather steep. I walked on without
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: one way the flesh resisted the barbed lead, and the
other way it resisted the feathered shaft. Also, it
hurt grievously, and I stopped him.
For some time we crouched there, Lop-Ear nervous and
anxious to be gone, perpetually and apprehensively
peering this way and that, and myself whimpering softly
and sobbing. Lop-Ear was plainly in a funk, and yet
his conduct in remaining by me, in spite of his fear, I
take as a foreshadowing of the altruism and comradeship
that have helped make man the mightiest of the animals.
Once again Lop-Ear tried to drag the arrow through the
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