| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: enabling him to see farther in front of him and to contemplate more
freely the height above, and to be less subject to distress than other
creatures [endowed like himself with eyes and ears and mouth].[12]
Consider next how they gave to the beast of the field[13] feet as a
means of progression only, but to man they gave in addition hands--
those hands which have achieved so much to raise us in the scale of
happiness above all animals. Did they not make the tongue also? which
belongs indeed alike to man and beast, but in man they fashioned it so
as to play on different parts of the mouth at different times, whereby
we can produce articulate speech, and have a code of signals to
express our every want to one another. Or consider the pleasures of
The Memorabilia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: where we found the energy to rise and go in search of it; it is
incredible that any creatures in such a pitiable and miserable
condition as we were could have been propelled by hope, unless it
is indeed immortal.
Half walking, half crawling, we went forward.
The place where we had found ourselves was a jumbled mass of
boulders and broken rock, but we soon discovered a passage, level
and straight as any tunnel built by man.
Down this we made our way. Every few feet we stopped to rest.
Neither of us spoke a word. I really had no sense of any purpose
in our progress; I crept on exactly as some animals, wounded to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: betokened fog again to-morrow. The streets
were full of people who had worked indoors
all through the priceless day and had now
come hungrily out to drink the muddy lees of
it. They stood in long black lines, waiting
before the pit entrances of the theatres--
short-coated boys, and girls in sailor hats,
all shivering and chatting gayly. There was
a blurred rhythm in all the dull city noises--
in the clatter of the cab horses and the rumbling
of the busses, in the street calls, and in the
Alexander's Bridge |
