| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: in inspiring large numbers of their contemporaries with higher
and grander religious notions than had ever before been
conceived; how they should have laid the foundations of a
theological system destined to hold together the most enlightened
and progressive portion of human society for seventeen or
eighteen centuries,--does not seem to have entered his mind.
Against such attacks as this, orthodoxy was comparatively safe;
for whatever doubt might be thrown upon some of its leading
dogmas, the system as a whole was more consistent and rational
than any of the theories which were endeavouring to supplant it.
And the fact that nearly all the great thinkers of the eighteenth
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: We add Seven, and Ten, and then multiply out
By One Thousand diminished by Eight.
"The result we proceed to divide, as you see,
By Nine Hundred and Ninety Two:
Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be
Exactly and perfectly true.
"The method employed I would gladly explain,
While I have it so clear in my head,
If I had but the time and you had but the brain--
But much yet remains to be said.
"In one moment I've seen what has hitherto been
The Hunting of the Snark |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: marble statue which the sculptor had condemned to remain
stretched out for ever, the wide eyes had come to have a ghastly
fixity.
He was dead, and in death he lost his last and sole illusion.
He had sought a shelter in his son's heart, and it had proved to
be a sepulchre, a pit deeper than men dig for their dead. The
hair on his head had risen and stiffened with horror, his
agonized glance still spoke. He was a father rising in just anger
from his tomb, to demand vengeance at the throne of God.
"There! it is all over with the old man!" cried Don Juan.
He had been so interested in holding the mysterious phial to the
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