| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: between the sun and earth seem figured in his mind as so many
elastic strings; indeed he accepts the assumed instantaneity of
gravity as the expression of the enormous elasticity of the 'lines
of weight.' Such views, fruitful in the case of magnetism, barren,
as yet, in the case of gravity, explain his efforts to transform
this latter force. When he goes into the open air and permits his
helices to fall, to his mind's eye they are tearing through the
lines of gravitating power, and hence his hope and conviction that
an effect would and ought to be produced. It must ever be borne in
mind that Faraday's difficulty in dealing with these conceptions was
at bottom the same as that of Newton; that he is in fact trying to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: such legendary lore, selects and produces, as having something in
it which he has been always obliged to give up as inexplicable.
Another symptom is a momentary hesitation to look round you, when
the interest of the narrative is at the highest; and the third, a
desire to avoid looking into a mirror when you are alone in your
chamber for the evening. I mean such are signs which indicate
the crisis, when a female imagination is in due temperature to
enjoy a ghost story. I do not pretend to describe those which
express the same disposition in a gentleman."
"That last symptom, dear aunt, of shunning the mirror seems
likely to be a rare occurrence amongst the fair sex."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: The strongest body shall it make most weak,
Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.
'It shall be sparing and too full of riot,
Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures; 1148
The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,
Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;
It shall be raging mad, and silly mild,
Make the young old, the old become a child. 1152
'It shall suspect where is no cause of fear;
It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;
It shall be merciful, and too severe,
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