| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: craftsman. Some time before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van
Huysum, grown rich himself, had secretly carved for his friend a wall-
decoration in ebony, representing the chief scenes in the life of Van
Artevelde,--that brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of
Flanders. This wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty
panels, contained about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was
held to be Van Huysum's masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard
the burghers whom Charles V. determined to hang when he re-entered his
native town, proposed, it is said, to Van Claes to let him escape if
he would give him Van Huysum's great work; but the weaver had already
despatched it to Douai.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: hated his guts.
"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to
say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We
were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I
always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like
him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about
restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the
front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half
The Great Gatsby |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: all such sudden changes as results of special cerebral functions
unconsciously developing until they are ready to play a
controlling part when they make irruption into the conscious
life. When we treat of sudden 'conversion,' I shall make as much
use as I can of this hypothesis of subconscious incubation.
<175> In John Foster's Essay on Decision of Character, there is
an account of a case of sudden conversion to avarice, which is
illustrative enough to quote:--
A young man, it appears, "wasted, in two or three years, a large
patrimony in profligate revels with a number of worthless
associates who called themselves his friends, and who, when his
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