| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: Tierra del Fuego, I never saw in this respect so poor a country.
Even in the upper and damp region I procured very few,
excepting some minute Diptera and Hymenoptera, mostly of
common mundane forms. As before remarked, the insects,
for a tropical region, are of very small size and dull colours.
Of beetles I collected twenty-five species (excluding a
Dermestes and Corynetes imported, wherever a ship touches);
of these, two belong to the Harpalidae, two to the
Hydrophilidae, nine to three families of the Heteromera, and the
remaining twelve to as many different families. This
circumstance of insects (and I may add plants), where few in
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: sure, it must have existed in their own hearts first, or they would
never have gone thither. Believe it; be sure of it. No earnest thinker
is a plagiarist pure and simple. He will never borrow from others that
which he has not already, more or less, thought out for himself. When
once a great idea, instinctive, inductive (for the two expressions are
nearer akin than most fancy), has dawned on his soul, he will welcome
lovingly, awfully, any corroboration from foreign schools, and cry with
joy: "Behold, this is not altogether a dream: for others have found it
also. Surely it must be real, universal, eternal." No; be sure there
is far more originality (in the common sense of the word), and far less
(in the true sense of the word), than we fancy; and that it is a paltry
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: And looke on Death it selfe: vp, vp, and see
The great Doomes Image: Malcolme, Banquo,
As from your Graues rise vp, and walke like Sprights,
To countenance this horror. Ring the Bell.
Bell rings. Enter Lady.
Lady. What's the Businesse?
That such a hideous Trumpet calls to parley
The sleepers of the House? speake, speake
Macd. O gentle Lady,
'Tis not for you to heare what I can speake:
The repetition in a Womans eare,
Macbeth |
