| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: haven't got the sand for that!' cried Davis. 'It's the law
behind,' he added; 'it's the law does it, every time!'
'The beak ain't as black as he's sometimes pynted,' observed
Huish, humorously.
'Well, one got the law after a fashion,' said Attwater. 'One
had to be a number of things. It was sometimes rather a bore.'
'I should smile!' said Davis. 'Rather lively, I should think!'
'I dare say we mean the same thing,' said Attwater. 'However,
one way or another, one got it knocked into their heads that
they MUST work, and they DID. . . until the Lord took them!'
''Ope you made 'em jump,' said Huish.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: constitution, the all-possessing sense of self. It looks certainly
as if he was not over-proud of his person that he should have deemed
its recognition occasion for the primal curse, and among early races
the person is for a good deal of the personality. What he lamented
was not life but the unavoidable exertion necessary to getting his
daily bread, for the question whether life were worth while was as
futile then as now, and as inconceivable really as 4-dimensional
space.
We are then conscious of individuality as a force within ourselves.
But our knowledge by no means ends there; for we are aware of it in
the case of others as well.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Reaches far hands and faint. I hold the light
Close to your cheek, watch the pained pupils shrink,--
Watch the vile ghosts of all you vilely think . . .
Now all the hatreds of my life have met
To hold high carnival . . . we do not speak,
My fingers find the well-loved throat they seek,
And press, and fling you down . . . and then forget.
Who plays for me? What sudden drums keep time
To the ecstatic rhythm of my crime?
What flute shrills out as moonlight strikes the floor? . .
What violin so faintly cries
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