| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: there beside the natural warmth of several human beings in a
small room. There it is possible to sleep. During the whole
of last winter, in the case I have in mind, there were no
means of heating the other rooms, where the temperature
was almost always far below freezing point. It is difficult to
make the conditions real except by individual examples. The
lack of medicines, due directly to the blockade, seems to
have small effect on the imagination when simply stated as
such. Perhaps people will realize what it means when
instead of talking of the wounded undergoing operations
without anesthetics I record the case of an acquaintance, a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: continuously united. The currents of the sea are rapid and sweep across
the archipelago, and gales of wind are extraordinarily rare; so that the
islands are far more effectually separated from each other than they appear
to be on a map. Nevertheless a good many species, both those found in
other parts of the world and those confined to the archipelago, are common
to the several islands, and we may infer from certain facts that these have
probably spread from some one island to the others. But we often take, I
think, an erroneous view of the probability of closely allied species
invading each other's territory, when put into free intercommunication.
Undoubtedly if one species has any advantage whatever over another, it will
in a very brief time wholly or in part supplant it; but if both are equally
On the Origin of Species |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: Out of the black cave of time, terrible and swathed in scarlet,
rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at
six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will
break.
It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out.
There was something in the clear, pine-scented air of that
winter morning that seemed to bring him back his joyousness
and his ardour for life. But it was not merely the physical
conditions of environment that had caused the change.
His own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish
that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm.
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
