| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: writhing limbs know not where to find rest; he leans on Hope's
anchors. Death takes from him what he loves; roots up, and tears
violently away the stem round which his affections were twined--a
dark, dismal time, a frightful wrench--but some morning Religion
looks into his desolate house with sunrise, and says, that in
another world, another life, he shall meet his kindred again.
She speaks of that world as a place unsullied by sin--of that
life, as an era unembittered by suffering; she mightily
strengthens her consolation by connecting with it two ideas
--which mortals cannot comprehend, but on which they love to
repose--Eternity, Immortality; and the mind of the mourner, being
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: charming puzzles.
That, he replied, you will discover, if you answer; since you admit
medicine to be good for a man to drink, when wanted, must it not be good
for him to drink as much as possible; when he takes his medicine, a
cartload of hellebore will not be too much for him?
Ctesippus said: Quite so, Euthydemus, that is to say, if he who drinks is
as big as the statue of Delphi.
And seeing that in war to have arms is a good thing, he ought to have as
many spears and shields as possible?
Very true, said Ctesippus; and do you think, Euthydemus, that he ought to
have one shield only, and one spear?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: a year before Prothero was killed there were these heartaches. That
tragedy gave them their crowning justification. All these people
said in this form or that, "You owed a debt to us, you evaded it,
you betrayed us, you owed us life out of yourself, love and
services, and you have gone off from us all with this life that was
ours, to live by yourself in dreams about the rule of the world, and
with empty phantoms of power and destiny. All this was
intellectualization. You sacrificed us to the thin things of the
mind. There is no rule of the world at all, or none that a man like
you may lay hold upon. The rule of the world is a fortuitous result
of incalculably multitudinous forces. But all of us you could have
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