| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: Plato arranges in order the stages of knowledge and of existence. They are
the steps or grades by which he rises from sense and the shadows of sense
to the idea of beauty and good. Mind is in motion as well as at rest
(Soph.); and may be described as a dialectical progress which passes from
one limit or determination of thought to another and back again to the
first. This is the account of dialectic given by Plato in the Sixth Book
of the Republic, which regarded under another aspect is the mysticism of
the Symposium. He does not deny the existence of objects of sense, but
according to him they only receive their true meaning when they are
incorporated in a principle which is above them (Republic). In modern
language they might be said to come first in the order of experience, last
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: back in the lines again.
The grass began to get squashy, and Kala Nag's feet sucked and
squelched as he put them down, and the night mist at the bottom of
the valley chilled Little Toomai. There was a splash and a
trample, and the rush of running water, and Kala Nag strode
through the bed of a river, feeling his way at each step. Above
the noise of the water, as it swirled round the elephant's legs,
Little Toomai could hear more splashing and some trumpeting both
upstream and down--great grunts and angry snortings, and all the
mist about him seemed to be full of rolling, wavy shadows.
"Ai!" he said, half aloud, his teeth chattering. "The
The Jungle Book |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: despotism so much a part of him, that it rose above his poverty.
There are violent passions which drive a man to good or evil, making
of him a hero or a convict; of these there was not one that had failed
to leave its traces on the grandly-hewn, lividly Italian face. You
trembled lest a flash of thought should suddenly light up the deep
sightless hollows under the grizzled brows, as you might fear to see
brigands with torches and poniards in the mouth of a cavern. You felt
that there was a lion in that cage of flesh, a lion spent with useless
raging against iron bars. The fires of despair had burned themselves
out into ashes, the lava had cooled; but the tracks of the flames, the
wreckage, and a little smoke remained to bear witness to the violence
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