| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: educate. The character inherent in the American people has
done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done
somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in
its way. For government is an expedient, by which men would
fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been
said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let
alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of
india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over obstacles
which legislators are continually putting in their way;
and if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of
their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: "Oh!" said Mr. Uxbridge bowing, and looking at me gravely. I
looked at him also; he was a pale, stern-looking man, and forty
years old certainly. I derived the impression at once that he had
a domineering disposition, perhaps from the way in which he
controlled his horse.
"Nice beast that," said Mr. Van Horn.
"Yes," he answered, laying his hand on its mane, so that the
action brought immediately to my mind the recollection that I had
done so too. I would not meet his eye again, however.
"How long shall you remain, Uxbridge?"
"I don't know. You are not interested in the lawsuit, Miss
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: feeling or sensations; no comprehensiveness in an infinity of separate
actions. The individual never reflects upon himself as a whole; he can
hardly regard one act or part of his life as the cause or effect of any
other act or part. Whether in practice or speculation, he is to himself
only in successive instants. To such thinkers, whether in ancient or in
modern times, the mind is only the poor recipient of impressions--not the
heir of all the ages, or connected with all other minds. It begins again
with its own modicum of experience having only such vague conceptions of
the wisdom of the past as are inseparable from language and popular
opinion. It seeks to explain from the experience of the individual what
can only be learned from the history of the world. It has no conception of
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