| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: an orange, A LA Raratonga, burned my lip and eye with orange
juice. Now, all day, our three small pigs had been adrift,
to the mortal peril of our corn, lettuce, onions, etc., and
as I stood smarting on the back verandah, behold the three
piglings issuing from the wood just opposite. Instantly I
got together as many boys as I could - three, and got the
pigs penned against the rampart of the sty, till the others
joined; whereupon we formed a cordon, closed, captured the
deserters, and dropped them, squeaking amain, into their
strengthened barracks where, please God, they may now stay!
Perhaps you may suppose the day now over; you are not the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: influences by which the efforts of men to utter articulate sounds were
inspired. Yet in making these and similar generalizations we may note also
dangers to which we are exposed. (1) There is the confusion of ideas with
facts--of mere possibilities, and generalities, and modes of conception
with actual and definite knowledge. The words 'evolution,' 'birth,' 'law,'
development,' 'instinct,' 'implicit,' 'explicit,' and the like, have a
false clearness or comprehensiveness, which adds nothing to our knowledge.
The metaphor of a flower or a tree, or some other work of nature or art, is
often in like manner only a pleasing picture. (2) There is the fallacy of
resolving the languages which we know into their parts, and then imagining
that we can discover the nature of language by reconstructing them. (3)
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: you may find more of a strain. Less tragic and more tiresome. I,
on the other hand, want neither to die nor live for her." Amanda
moved sharply. "It's extraordinary what amazing vapours a lonely
man may get into his head. If you don't want a divorce then I
suppose things might go on as they are now."
"I hate things as they are now," said Easton. "I hate this
falsehood and deception."
"You would hate the scandal just as much," said Amanda.
"I would not care what the scandal was unless it hurt you."
"It would be only a temporary inconvenience," said Benham. "Every
one would sympathize with you. . . . The whole thing is so
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