| 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: In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
incoherence--an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise
from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an
habitual trepidancy--an excessive nervous agitation. For
something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by
his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and
by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation
and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision
(when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to
that species of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty,
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: The steel just graz'd along the shoulder joint,
And mark'd it slightly with the glancing point,
Fierce Turnus first to nearer distance drew,
And pois'd his pointed spear, before he threw:
Then, as the winged weapon whizz'd along,
"See now," said he, "whose arm is better strung."
The spear kept on the fatal course, unstay'd
By plates of ir'n, which o'er the shield were laid:
Thro' folded brass and tough bull hides it pass'd,
His corslet pierc'd, and reach'd his heart at last.
In vain the youth tugs at the broken wood;
Aeneid |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: just as well have asked me the use of thought. It is Criticism, as
Arnold points out, that creates the intellectual atmosphere of the
age. It is Criticism, as I hope to point out myself some day, that
makes the mind a fine instrument. We, in our educational system,
have burdened the memory with a load of unconnected facts, and
laboriously striven to impart our laboriously-acquired knowledge.
We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
It has never occurred to us to try and develop in the mind a more
subtle quality of apprehension and discernment. The Greeks did
this, and when we come in contact with the Greek critical
intellect, we cannot but be conscious that, while our subject-
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