| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: SPHERE. Not I. There is no such land. The very idea of it
is utterly inconceivable.
I. Not inconceivable, my Lord, to me, and therefore still less
inconceivable to my Master. Nay, I despair not that, even here,
in this region of Three Dimensions, your Lordship's art
may make the Fourth Dimension visible to me; just as in the Land
of Two Dimensions my Teacher's skill would fain have opened the eyes
of his blind servant to the invisible presence of a Third Dimension,
though I saw it not.
Let me recall the past. Was I not taught below that when I saw a Line
and inferred a Plane, I in reality saw a Third unrecognized Dimension,
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: whom thou goest, for he is near of kin to Sinis.'
'Then I have slain my own kinsman,' said Theseus, 'though
well he deserved to die. Who will purge me from his death,
for rightfully I slew him, unrighteous and accursed as he
was?'
And the old man answered -
'That will the heroes do, the sons of Phytalus, who dwell
beneath the elm-tree in Aphidnai, by the bank of silver
Cephisus; for they know the mysteries of the Gods. Thither
you shall go and be purified, and after you shall be our
king.'
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: first made his appearance, in 1833, on the boulevard des Italiens, at
Frascati, and at the Jockey-Club, he was leading the life of a young
man who, having lost his political prospects, was taking his pleasure
in Parisian dissipation. At first he was thought to be a student.
The Polish nationality had at this period fallen as low in French
estimation, thanks to a shameful governmental reaction, as the
republicans had sought to raise it. The singular struggle of the
Movement against Resistance (two words which will be inexplicable
thirty years hence) made sport of what ought to have been truly
respected,--the name of a conquered nation to whom the French had
offered hospitality, for whom fetes had been given (with songs and
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