| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: avoid a scandal; and whether, if he went to that extremity,
it was possible that Alexander might rebel.
'Hum!' said Mr. Nicholson, and put his hand, limp and dead,
into John's.
And then, in an embarrassed silence, all took their places;
and even the paper - from which it was the old gentleman's
habit to suck mortification daily, as he marked the decline
of our institutions - even the paper lay furled by his side.
But presently Flora came to the rescue. She slid into the
silence with a technicality, asking if John still took his
old inordinate amount of sugar. Thence it was but a step to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: make the percipient other and different; nor can that object which affects
me, meeting another subject, produce the same, or become similar, for that
too would produce another result from another subject, and become
different.
THEAETETUS: True.
SOCRATES: Neither can I by myself, have this sensation, nor the object by
itself, this quality.
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: When I perceive I must become percipient of something--there can
be no such thing as perceiving and perceiving nothing; the object, whether
it become sweet, bitter, or of any other quality, must have relation to a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: It was so evident that Thomas did not want me inside that I went
in.
"Tell Warner he is needed in a hurry," I repeated, and turned
into the little sitting-room. I could hear Thomas going up the
stairs, could hear him rouse Warner, and the steps of the
chauffeur as he hurriedly dressed. But my attention was busy
with the room below.
On the center-table, open, was a sealskin traveling bag. It was
filled with gold-topped bottles and brushes, and it breathed
opulence, luxury, femininity from every inch of surface. How did
it get there? I was still asking myself the question when Warner
The Circular Staircase |
