| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: Nordau" seeks to undermine all mysticism by exposing the weakness
of the lower kinds. Mysticism for him means any sudden
perception of hidden significance in things. He explains such
perception by the abundant uncompleted associations which
experiences may arouse in a degenerate brain. These give to him
who has the experience a vague and vast sense of its leading
further, yet they awaken no definite or useful consequent in his
thought. The explanation is a plausible one for certain sorts of
feeling of significance, and other alienists (Wernicke, for
example, in his Grundriss der Psychiatrie, Theil ii., Leipzig,
1896) have explained "paranoiac" conditions by a laming of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: softly and put no questions, and avoided irritating him in any way.
I had brought some of my nicest books for him: he asked me to read
a little of one, and I was about to comply, when Earnshaw burst the
door open: having gathered venom with reflection. He advanced
direct to us, seized Linton by the arm, and swung him off the seat.
'"Get to thy own room!" he said, in a voice almost inarticulate
with passion; and his face looked swelled and furious. "Take her
there if she comes to see thee: thou shalln't keep me out of this.
Begone wi' ye both!"
'He swore at us, and left Linton no time to answer, nearly throwing
him into the kitchen; and he clenched his fist as I followed,
Wuthering Heights |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: unlooked-for twist, he wondered not a little as he groped. He
didn't care what awful crash might overtake him, with what ignominy
or what monstrosity he might yet he associated--since he wasn't
after all too utterly old to suffer--if it would only be decently
proportionate to the posture he had kept, all his life, in the
threatened presence of it. He had but one desire left--that he
shouldn't have been "sold."
CHAPTER IV
Then it was that, one afternoon, while the spring of the year was
young and new she met all in her own way his frankest betrayal of
these alarms. He had gone in late to see her, but evening hadn't
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