| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: Almost all Agnostic and Atheistical writings that show any fineness
and generosity of spirit, have this tendency to become as it were
the statement of an anonymous God. Everything is said that a
religious writer would say--except that God is not named. Religious
metaphors abound. It is as if they accepted the living body of
religion but denied the bones that held it together--as they might
deny the bones of a friend. It is true, they would admit, the body
moves in a way that implies bones in its every movement, but --WE
HAVE NEVER SEEN THOSE BONES.
The disputes in theory--I do not say the difference in reality--
between the modern believer and the atheist or agnostic--becomes at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: and was famous for his penmanship.
When the weather was fine, they went to Geffosses. The house was built
in the centre of the sloping yard; and the sea looked like a grey spot
in the distance. Felicite would take slices of cold meat from the
lunch basket and they would sit down and eat in a room next to the
dairy. This room was all that remained of a cottage that had been torn
down. The dilapidated wall-paper trembled in the drafts. Madame
Aubain, overwhelmed by recollections, would hang her head, while the
children were afraid to open their mouths. Then, "Why don't you go and
play?" their mother would say; and they would scamper off.
Paul would go to the old barn, catch birds, throw stones into the
A Simple Soul |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: Madame Munster; and the Baroness followed her to Mrs. Acton's apartment.
Eugenia reflected, as she went, that it was not the affectation
of impertinence that made her dislike this young lady, for on
that ground she could easily have beaten her. It was not an
aspiration on the girl's part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing,
childishly-mocking indifference to the results of comparison.
Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced woman of five and fifty,
sitting with pillows behind her, and looking out on a clump
of hemlocks. She was very modest, very timid, and very ill;
she made Eugenia feel grateful that she herself was not like that--
neither so ill, nor, possibly, so modest. On a chair, beside her,
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