| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be
shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture
presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault
or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without
interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design
served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an
exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was
observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch,
or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood
of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a
ghastly and inappropriate splendour.
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: committed all the crimes in the calendar, and must be hanged to-
morrow; and am in the meanwhile in a fear so extreme that I lack
words to picture it."
"Dear me," said the physician. "This is really amazing. Well,
well; perhaps, if you had not been painted, you would have been
more frightened still."
VIII. - THE HOUSE OF ELD.
So soon as the child began to speak, the gyve was riveted; and the
boys and girls limped about their play like convicts. Doubtless it
was more pitiable to see and more painful to bear in youth; but
even the grown folk, besides being very unhandy on their feet, were
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: remark, endless contradictions arise when we deny this; e.g. here are six
dice; they are more than four and less than twelve; "more and also less,"
would you not say?' 'Yes.' 'But Protagoras will retort: "Can anything be
more or less without addition or subtraction?"'
'I should say "No" if I were not afraid of contradicting my former answer.'
'And if you say "Yes," the tongue will escape conviction but not the mind,
as Euripides would say?' 'True.' 'The thoroughbred Sophists, who know all
that can be known, would have a sparring match over this, but you and I,
who have no professional pride, want only to discover whether our ideas are
clear and consistent. And we cannot be wrong in saying, first, that
nothing can be greater or less while remaining equal; secondly, that there
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