| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Koran: tidings of forgiveness and a noble hire.
Verily, we quicken the dead, and write down what they have done
before, and what vestiges they leave behind; and everything have we
counted in a plain model.
Strike out for them a parable: the fellows of the city when there
came to it the apostles; when we sent those two and they called them
both liars, and we strengthened them with a third; and they said,
'Verily, we are sent to you.'
They said, 'Ye are only mortals like ourselves, nor has the Merciful
sent down aught; ye are naught but liars.'
They said, 'Our Lord knows that we are sent to you, and we have only
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: foundations are weak, and in many places rest only on the surface of the
ground. It has sought rather to put together scattered observations and to
make them into a system than to describe or prove them. It has never
severely drawn the line between facts and opinions. It has substituted a
technical phraseology for the common use of language, being neither able to
win acceptance for the one nor to get rid of the other.
The system which has thus arisen appears to be a kind of metaphysic
narrowed to the point of view of the individual mind, through which, as
through some new optical instrument limiting the sphere of vision, the
interior of thought and sensation is examined. But the individual mind in
the abstract, as distinct from the mind of a particular individual and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: thither are simple, easy, certain, infallible-- and that is the
purpose of my present proposal."
A storm of acclamations greeted these words. There was not a
single person in the whole audience who was not overcome,
carried away, lifted out of himself by the speaker's words!
Long-continued applause resounded from all sides.
As soon as the excitement had partially subsided, Barbicane
resumed his speech in a somewhat graver voice.
"You know," said he, "what progress artillery science has made
during the last few years, and what a degree of perfection
firearms of every kind have reached. Moreover, you are well
From the Earth to the Moon |
