| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: That now some portions seem about to fall,
And falls the whole ere long- betrayed indeed
By first deceiving estimates: so too
Thy calculations in affairs of life
Must be askew and false, if sprung for thee
From senses false. So all that troop of words
Marshalled against the senses is quite vain.
And now remains to demonstrate with ease
How other senses each their things perceive.
Firstly, a sound and every voice is heard,
When, getting into ears, they strike the sense
Of The Nature of Things |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: that of scent. Each of us, man or beast, has his own peculiar
odor, and it is mostly by this that the beasts of the jungle,
endowed with miraculous powers of scent, recognize indi-
viduals.
It is the final proof. You have seen it demonstrated a thou-
sand times -- a dog recognizes your voice and looks at you.
He knows your face and figure. Good, there can be no doubt
in his mind but that it is you; but is he satisfied? No, sir --
he
must come up and smell of you. All his other senses may be
fallible, but not his sense of smell, and so he makes assurance
Tarzan the Untamed |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anthem by Ayn Rand: their head falling softly upon our shoulder.
Then we lit a candle, and we brought paper
from the room of the manuscripts,
and we sat by the window, for we
knew that we could not sleep tonight.
And now we look upon the earth and sky.
This spread of naked rock and peaks
and moonlight is like a world ready to be
born, a world that waits. It seems to us it
asks a sign from us, a spark, a first commandment.
We cannot know what word we are to give,
Anthem |
