| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: body of doctrine and that pressed from headquarters upon
Clockborough--the bottling, in a word, of the air of those lungs
for convenient public uncorking in corn-exchanges--was an
experiment for which no one had the leisure. The only thing would
have been to carry him massively about, paid, caged, clipped; to
turn him on for a particular occasion in a particular channel.
Frank Saltram's channel, however, was essentially not calculable,
and there was no knowing what disastrous floods might have ensued.
For what there would have been to do THE EMPIRE, the great
newspaper, was there to look to; but it was no new misfortune that
there were delicate situations in which THE EMPIRE broke down. In
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: but a trifling part of any piece of literature, and the view
of the writer is itself a fact more important because less
disputable than the others. Now this spirit in which a
subject is regarded, important in all kinds of literary work,
becomes all-important in works of fiction, meditation, or
rhapsody; for there it not only colours but itself chooses
the facts; not only modifies but shapes the work. And hence,
over the far larger proportion of the field of literature,
the health or disease of the writer's mind or momentary
humour forms not only the leading feature of his work, but
is, at bottom, the only thing he can communicate to others.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: propagate them.
The leaders we speak of are more frequently men of action than
thinkers. They are not gifted with keen foresight, nor could
they be, as this quality generally conduces to doubt and
inactivity. They are especially recruited from the ranks of
those morbidly nervous, excitable, half-deranged persons who are
bordering on madness. However absurd may be the idea they uphold
or the goal they pursue, their convictions are so strong that all
reasoning is lost upon them. Contempt and persecution do not
affect them, or only serve to excite them the more. They
sacrifice their personal interest, their family--everything. The
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