| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: monotheism, is to sin against the canons of a sound inductive
philosophy. Philology itself teaches us that this could not
have been so. Father Dyaus was originally the bright sky and
nothing more. Although his name became generalized, in the
classic languages, into deus, or God, it is quite certain that
in early days, before the Aryan separation, it had acquired no
such exalted significance. It was only in Greece and Rome--or,
we may say, among the still united Italo-Hellenic tribes--that
Jupiter-Zeus attained a pre-eminence over all other deities.
The people of Iran quite rejected him, the Teutons preferred
Thor and Odin, and in India he was superseded, first by Indra,
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: The Fire-Man was throwing things at Lop-Ear as we
sometimes threw things at one another.
The game continued a little longer, but Lop-Ear did not
expose himself a second time. Then the Fire-Man gave
it up. I leaned far out over my horizontal limb and
chattered down at him. I wanted to play. I wanted to
have him try to hit me with the thing. He saw me, but
ignored me, turning his attention to Broken-Tooth, who
was still teetering slightly and involuntarily on the
end of the branch.
The first arrow leaped upward. Broken-Tooth yelled
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: flowery unguarded slopes, where trespasses ripen into errors full of
equivocal effervescence, into too palpitating issues. The anecdote
puts La Palferine's genius before you in all its vivacity and
completeness. He realizes Pascal's /entre-deux/, he comprehends the
whole scale between tenderness and pitilessness, and, like
Epaminondas, he is equally great in extremes. And not merely so, his
epigram stamps the epoch; the /accoucheur/ is a modern innovation. All
the refinements of modern civilization are summed up in the phrase. It
is monumental."
"Look here, my dear Nathan, what farrago of nonsense is this?" asked
the Marquise in bewilderment.
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