| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: ION: I cannot deny what you say, Socrates. Nevertheless I am conscious in
my own self, and the world agrees with me in thinking that I do speak
better and have more to say about Homer than any other man. But I do not
speak equally well about others--tell me the reason of this.
SOCRATES: I perceive, Ion; and I will proceed to explain to you what I
imagine to be the reason of this. The gift which you possess of speaking
excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an
inspiration; there is a divinity moving you, like that contained in the
stone which Euripides calls a magnet, but which is commonly known as the
stone of Heraclea. This stone not only attracts iron rings, but also
imparts to them a similar power of attracting other rings; and sometimes
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: had a red handkerchief round his head, and a felt hat above that. His nose
was flat, his eyes like slits, and the wool on his head was gathered into
little round balls. He came to the milk-bush, and looked at the little
girl lying in the hot sun. Then he walked off, and caught one of the
fattest little Angora goats, and held its mouth fast, as he stuck it under
his arm. He looked back to see that she was still sleeping, and jumped down
into one of the sluits. He walked down the bed of the sluit a little way
and came to an overhanging bank, under which, sitting on the red sand, were
two men. One was a tiny, ragged, old bushman, four feet high; the other
was an English navvy, in a dark blue blouse. They cut the kid's throat
with the navvy's long knife, and covered up the blood with sand, and buried
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: confirmation. But the earliest date, 1655, apparently the marriage
of James in Nether Carsewell, cannot as yet be pushed back. From
which of any number of dozen little families in Cunningham we
should derive, God knows! Of course, it doesn't matter a hundred
years hence, an argument fatal to all human enterprise, industry,
or pleasure. And to me it will be a deadly disappointment if I
cannot roll this stone away! One generation further might be
nothing, but it is my present object of desire, and we are so near
it! There is a man in the same parish called Constantine; if I
could only trace to him, I could take you far afield by that one
talisman of the strange Christian name of Constantine. But no such
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