| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: all the historians - I do not say of antiquity but of all time -
none is more rationalistic than he, none more free from any belief
in the 'visions and omens, the monstrous legends, the grovelling
superstitions and unmanly craving for the supernatural' ([Greek
text that cannot be reproduced](11)) which he himself is compelled
to notice as the characteristics of some of the historians who
preceded him. Fortunate in the land which bore him, he was no less
blessed in the wondrous time of his birth. For, representing in
himself the spiritual supremacy of the Greek intellect and allied
in bonds of chivalrous friendship to the world-conqueror of his
day, he seems led as it were by the hand of Fate 'to comprehend,'
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: "Never," said Mr. Hoopdriver. He did not wait for her context,
but suddenly broke out with an account of his literary
requirements. "The fact is--I've read precious little. One don't
get much of a chance, situated as I am. We have a library at
business, and I've gone through that. Most Besant I've read, and
a lot of Mrs. Braddon's and Rider Haggard and Marie Corelli--and,
well--a Ouida or so. They're good stories, of course, and
first-class writers, but they didn't seem to have much to do with
me. But there's heaps of books one hears talked about, I HAVEN'T
read."
"Don't you read any other books but novels?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: That somehow the right is the right
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:
Lord, if that were enough?
XXVI - MY WIFE
TRUSTY, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
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