| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: Natural selection will never produce in a being anything injurious to
itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No
organ will be formed, as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of causing
pain or for doing an injury to its possessor. If a fair balance be struck
between the good and evil caused by each part, each will be found on the
whole advantageous. After the lapse of time, under changing conditions of
life, if any part comes to be injurious, it will be modified; or if it be
not so, the being will become extinct, as myriads have become extinct.
Natural selection tends only to make each organic being as perfect as, or
slightly more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same country with
which it has to struggle for existence. And we see that this is the degree
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: sometimes in his attempts to be witty -- Papa says it
would be a fine idea to lead the man who talked to
us into a boiled cabbage foundy and then watch
him die of the noise. Papa is not Sensitized; he
doesn't understand that the esthete really WOULD die --
Papa resists the vibrations of the esthetic en-
vironment with which I have striven to surround him,
if you get what I mean.
Oh, to be Sensitized! To be Sensitized! To vi-
brate like a reed in the wind! To thrill like a petal
in the sun!
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: "Not I. I know nothing, sir, outside eight shillings a
week."
"And that Mr. Farfrae is well aware of it? He's sharp in
trade, but he wouldn't do anything so underhand as what you
hint at."
Whether because Lucetta heard this low dialogue, or not her
white figure disappeared from her doorway inward, and the
door was shut before Henchard could reach it to converse
with her further. This disappointed him, for he had been
sufficiently disturbed by what the man had said to wish to
speak to her more closely. While pausing the old constable
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
