| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: written by a physician 1 of England, who has the honor of having broken
the ice on this subject, and of having been the first to teach that there
are many small passages at the extremities of the arteries, through which
the blood received by them from the heart passes into the small branches
of the veins, whence it again returns to the heart; so that its course
amounts precisely to a perpetual circulation. Of this we have abundant
proof in the ordinary experience of surgeons, who, by binding the arm with
a tie of moderate straitness above the part where they open the vein,
cause the blood to flow more copiously than it would have done without any
ligature; whereas quite the contrary would happen were they to bind it
below; that is, between the hand and the opening, or were to make the
Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Rig Veda: the wise
King doth not treat his friend unkindly.
Like a son following his father's wishes, grant to this family
success
and safety.
31 Now are thy streams poured forth with all their sweetness,
when,
purified. thou goest through the filter.
The race of kine is thy gift, Pavarridna: when born thou madest
Surya
rich with brightness.
The Rig Veda |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: clan spirit survives; where the servant tends to spend her life in the
same service, a helpmeet at first, then a tyrant, and at last a
pensioner; where, besides, she is not necessarily destitute of the pride
of birth, but is, perhaps, like Kirstie, a connection of her master's,
and at least knows the legend of her own family, and may count kinship
with some illustrious dead. For that is the mark of the Scot of all
classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to
Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears,
good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the
dead even to the twentieth generation. No more characteristic instance
could be found than in the family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all,
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