| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: had fears for her safety from robbers during the night. Our
pilot, Mr. Douglas, accordingly told the constable of the
district that we always placed sentinels with loaded arms
and not understanding Spanish, if we saw any person in the
dark, we should assuredly shoot him. The constable, with
much humility, agreed to the perfect propriety of this
arrangement, and promised us that no one should stir out
of his house during that night.
During the four succeeding days we continued sailing
southward. The general features of the country remained
the same, but it was much less thickly inhabited. On the
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: decay; we forget that he came of two people and may beget many, that
he has forgotten much and will forget more, that he can be confused,
divided against himself, delirious, drunken, drugged, or asleep. On
the contrary we are, in our hasty way of thinking of him, apt to
suppose him continuous, definite, acting consistently and never
forgetting. But only abstract and theoretical persons are like
that. We couple with him the idea of a body. Indeed, in the common
use of the word "person" there is more thought of body than of mind.
We speak of a lover possessing the person of his mistress. We speak
of offences against the person as opposed to insults, libels, or
offences against property. And the gods of primitive men and the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: example the omega in oon, which represents the round form of the egg by the
figure of the mouth: or bronte (thunder), in which the fulness of the
sound of the word corresponds to the thing signified by it; or bombos
(buzzing), of which the first syllable, as in its English equivalent, has
the meaning of a deep sound. We may observe also (as we see in the case of
the poor stammerer) that speech has the co-operation of the whole body and
may be often assisted or half expressed by gesticulation. A sound or word
is not the work of the vocal organs only; nearly the whole of the upper
part of the human frame, including head, chest, lungs, have a share in
creating it; and it may be accompanied by a movement of the eyes, nose,
fingers, hands, feet which contributes to the effect of it.
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