| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: and the next thing I knew she had fallen back with a quick spasm,
as if death had descended on her, into Miss Tita's arms.
IX
I left Venice the next morning, as soon as I learned that the old
lady had not succumbed, as I feared at the moment, to the shock
I had given her--the shock I may also say she had given me.
How in the world could I have supposed her capable of getting out
of bed by herself? I failed to see Miss Tita before going; I only saw
the donna, whom I entrusted with a note for her younger mistress.
In this note I mentioned that I should be absent but for a few days.
I went to Treviso, to Bassano, to Castelfranco; I took walks and drives and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: must we forget that in a primitive state of society (the
Matriarchate) that influence was probably even greater
than now; for the father of the child being (often as not)
UNKNOWN the attachment to the mother was all the more
intense and undivided. The word Mother had a magic about
it which has remained even until to-day. But if that
word rooted itself deep in the heart of the Child, the
other word 'virgin' had an obvious magic for the full
grown and sexually mature Man--a magic which it, too,
has never lost.
[1] Nor is it difficult to see how out of the discreet use of
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: Greeks and barbarians, kings and slaves. And he who boasts of his descent
from Amphitryon in the twenty-fifth generation, may, if he pleases, add as
many more, and double that again, and our philosopher only laughs at his
inability to do a larger sum. Such is the man at whom the vulgar scoff; he
seems to them as if he could not mind his feet. 'That is very true,
Socrates.' But when he tries to draw the quick-witted lawyer out of his
pleas and rejoinders to the contemplation of absolute justice or injustice
in their own nature, or from the popular praises of wealthy kings to the
view of happiness and misery in themselves, or to the reasons why a man
should seek after the one and avoid the other, then the situation is
reversed; the little wretch turns giddy, and is ready to fall over the
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