| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: generally--these origins have been stock warrants for the truth
of one opinion after another which we find represented in
religious history. The medical materialists are therefore only
so many belated dogmatists, neatly turning the tables on their
predecessors by using the criterion of origin in a destructive
instead of an accreditive way.
They are effective with their talk of pathological origin only so
long as supernatural origin is pleaded by the other side, and
nothing but the argument from origin is under discussion. But
the argument from origin has seldom been used alone, for it is
too obviously insufficient. Dr. Maudsley is perhaps the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: a thrashing.
"He give you thet?" asked his mother. Willie nodded
assent.
"'N' thet ain't all he had neither," he said. "Beside
all them bills he showed me a whole pocket full o'
jewlry, 'n' he had a string o' things thet I don't know
jest what you call 'em; but they looked like they was
made outen the inside o' clam shells only they was all
round like marbles."
Detective Burton raised his eyebrows. "Miss Prim's
pearl necklace," he commented to the man at his side.
The Oakdale Affair |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: her daughter had known how nearly he had accepted it!
"It was a dreadful temptation," he said, smiling.
"To go with us? Then why--?"
"Oh, everything's different now: I've got to stick to my
writing."
Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny.
"Does that mean that you're going to give up your real work?"
"My real work--archaeology?" He smiled again to hide a twitch
of regret. "Why, I'm afraid it hardly produces a living wage;
and I've got to think of that." He coloured suddenly, as if
suspecting that Miss Hicks might consider the avowal an opening
|
