| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: imp!' he cried. 'What a morning, what an hour for a theorist of
forty-two! No,' he continued, apostrophising heaven, 'I did not
know such boys existed; I was ignorant they made them so; I had
doubted of my race; and now! It is like,' he added, picking up his
stick, 'like a lovers' meeting. I have bruised my favourite staff
in that moment of enthusiasm. The injury, however, is not grave.'
He caught the boy looking at him in obvious wonder, embarrassment,
and alarm. 'Hullo!' said he, 'why do you look at me like that?
Egad, I believe the boy despises me. Do you despise me, boy?'
'O, no,' replied Jean-Marie, seriously; 'only I do not understand.'
'You must excuse me, sir,' returned the Doctor, with gravity; 'I am
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: would have been puzzled to decide whether the room had been built for
the bed or the bed for the room. Two cupids playing on the walnut
headboard, wreathed with garlands, might have passed for angels; and
columns of the same wood, supporting the tester were carved with
mythological allegories, the explanation of which could have been
found either in the Bible or Ovid's Metamorphoses. Take away the bed,
and the same tester would have served in a church for the canopy of
the pulpit or the seats of the wardens. The married pair mounted by
three steps to this sumptuous couch, which stood upon a platform and
was hung with curtains of green silk covered with brilliant designs
called "ramages"--possibly because the birds of gay plumage there
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: we talk of a human being, such heartless blockheads are we that
quite involuntarily we only think of man. It is only in the umon
of man and woman by love (sensuous and supersensuous) that the
human being exists; and as the human being cannot rise to the
conception of anything higher than his own existence--his own
being--so the transcendent act of his life is this consummation
of his humanity through love."
It is clear after this utterance from the would-be
Schopenhaurian, that Wagner's explanations of his works for the
most part explain nothing but the mood in which he happened to be
on the day he advanced them, or the train of thought suggested to
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