| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: Edinburgh he had seized upon the opportunity of a flirtation,
and had carried the "battering" so far that when next he
moved from town, it was to steal two days with this anonymous
fair one. The exact importance to Burns of this affair may
be gathered from the song in which he commemorated its
occurrence. "I love the dear lassie," he sings, "because she
loves me;" or, in the tongue of prose: "Finding an
opportunity, I did not hesitate to profit by it, and even
now, if it returned, I should not hesitate to profit by it
again." A love thus founded has no interest for mortal man.
Meantime, early in the winter, and only once, we find him
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: their case desperate. So little do we see before us in the world,
and so much reason have we to depend cheerfully upon the great
Maker of the world, that He does not leave His creatures so
absolutely destitute, but that in the worst circumstances they have
always something to be thankful for, and sometimes are nearer
deliverance than they imagine; nay, are even brought to their
deliverance by the means by which they seem to be brought to their
destruction.
It was just at high-water when these people came on shore; and
while they rambled about to see what kind of a place they were in,
they had carelessly stayed till the tide was spent, and the water
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist, and
made things monstrous in their monotony of repetition, and
contemptible in their conformity to rule, and destroyed throughout
all France all those fine freedoms of expression that had made
tradition new in beauty, and new modes one with antique form. But
the past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It
is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man
should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be.
The future is what artists are.
It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here
is quite unpractical, and goes against human nature. This is
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