| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: would have been to invite instant detection, and so, though I was
loath to permit Thurid to pass even for an instant beyond my sight,
I was forced to wait in the shadows until the other boat had passed
from my sight at the far extremity of the lake.
Then I paddled out upon the brilliant surface in the direction
they had taken.
When, after what seemed an eternity, I reached the shadows at
the upper end of the lake I found that the river issued from a low
aperture, to pass beneath which it was necessary that I compel
The Warlord of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: he yet believed it was no longer there.
However, as if fate resolved on depriving the prisoners of
their last chance, and making them understand that they were
condemned to perpetual imprisonment, a new misfortune befell
them; the gallery on the sea side, which had long been in
ruins, was rebuilt. They had repaired it completely, and
stopped up with vast masses of stone the hole Dantes had
partly filled in. But for this precaution, which, it will be
remembered, the abbe had made to Edmond, the misfortune
would have been still greater, for their attempt to escape
would have been detected, and they would undoubtedly have
The Count of Monte Cristo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: in responding to that which encountered it.
You see from these two extracts what questions were arising in the minds
of men, and how they touched on ethical and theological questions. I
say arising in their minds: I believe that I ought to say rather,
stirred up in their minds by One greater than they. At all events,
there they appeared, utterly independent of any Christian teaching. The
belief in this Logos or Daemon speaking to the Reason of man, was one
which neither Plutarch nor Marcus, neither Numenius nor Ammonius, as far
as we can see, learnt from the Christians; it was the common ground
which they held with them; the common battlefield which they disputed
with them.
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