| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: his friend looked at him.
"What have you been doing lately?" he demanded. Presley,
wondering, told of his various comings and goings.
"I don't mean that," returned the other. "Something has happened
to you, something has aroused you. I am right, am I not? Yes,
I thought so. In this poem of yours, you have not been trying to
make a sounding piece of literature. You wrote it under
tremendous stress. Its very imperfections show that. It is
better than a mere rhyme. It is an Utterance--a Message. It is
Truth. You have come back to the primal heart of things, and you
have seen clearly. Yes, it is a great poem."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--
all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war,
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--
seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation.
Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather
than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
Second Inaugural Address |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: it cannot thus act. "After some fruitless efforts, therefore, it gives
up trying in that way, seems restless, as though, says Pfluger,
it was seeking some other way, and at last it makes use of
the foot of the other leg and succeeds in rubbing off the acid.
Notably we have here not merely contractions of muscles, but combined
and harmonized contractions in due sequence for a special purpose.
These are actions that have all the appearance of being guided
by intelligence and instigated by will in an animal, the recognized
organ of whose intelligence and will has been removed."[10]
[9] Prof. Huxley remarks (`Elementary Physiology,'
5th edit. p. 305) that reflex actions proper to the spinal cord
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
