| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: Abolitionists,--poured out against slavery during thirty years,--
even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case,
that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond
the limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion,
and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict,
even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed.
It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail
where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends.
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
What that thing is, we have been taught to our cost. It remains now
to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: evoked Paradise, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the blazing cities,
the dying nations, the shattered idols; and out of this she developed
a great respect for the Almighty and a great fear of His wrath. Then,
when she had listened to the Passion, she wept. Why had they crucified
Him who loved little children, nourished the people, made the blind
see, and who, out of humility, had wished to be born among the poor,
in a stable? The sowings, the harvests, the wine-presses, all those
familiar things which the Scriptures mention, formed a part of her
life; the word of God sanctified them; and she loved the lambs with
increased tenderness for the sake of the Lamb, and the doves because
of the Holy Ghost.
A Simple Soul |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: and that the art of which I am speaking cannot be taught, neither go
yourselves, nor send your children, to the Sophists, who are the teachers
of these things--you take care of your money and give them none; and the
result is, that you are the worse off both in public and private life:--Let
us suppose this to be our answer to the world in general: And now I should
like to ask you, Hippias, and you, Prodicus, as well as Protagoras (for the
argument is to be yours as well as ours), whether you think that I am
speaking the truth or not?
They all thought that what I said was entirely true.
Then you agree, I said, that the pleasant is the good, and the painful
evil. And here I would beg my friend Prodicus not to introduce his
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