| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: poring over them as over our Bible of old. We have thought we were utterly
stupid, incapable of remembering anything, of learning anything. Now we
find that all is easy. Has a new soul crept into this old body, that even
our intellectual faculties are changed? We marvel; not perceiving that
what a man expends in prayer and ecstasy he cannot have over for acquiring
knowledge. You never shed a tear, or create a beautiful image, or quiver
with emotion, but you pay for it at the practical, calculating end of your
nature. You have just so much force: when the one channel runs over the
other runs dry.
And now we turn to Nature. All these years we have lived beside her, and
we have never seen her; and now we open our eyes and look at her.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: HIPPIAS: Yes, I am.
SOCRATES: And does not the same hold of astronomy?
HIPPIAS: True, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And in astronomy, too, if any man be able to speak falsely he
will be the good astronomer, but he who is not able will not speak falsely,
for he has no knowledge.
HIPPIAS: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: Then in astronomy also, the same man will be true and false?
HIPPIAS: It would seem so.
SOCRATES: And now, Hippias, consider the question at large about all the
sciences, and see whether the same principle does not always hold. I know
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: suddenly uttered an exclamation.
"Well, if I'm not here talking to you and forgetting
something I was just dying to tell you. Mrs. McTeague, what
ever in the world do you suppose? Maria and old Zerkow,
that red-headed Polish Jew, the rag-bottles-sacks man, you
know, they're going to be married."
"No!" cried Trina, in blank amazement. "You don't mean it."
"Of course I do. Isn't it the funniest thing you ever heard
of?"
"Oh, tell me all about it," said Trina, leaning eagerly from
the window. Miss Baker crossed the street and stood just
McTeague |
