| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: the ears were so transparent to the light that in the sunshine they
were rose-colored. The complexion, though sun-burned, showed a
marvellous delicacy in the texture of the skin. If, as Buffon
declared, love lies in touch, the softness of the girl's skin must
have had the penetrating and inciting influence of the fragrance of
daturas. The chest and indeed the whole body was alarmingly thin; but
the feet and hands, of alluring delicacy, showed remarkable nervous
power, and a vigorous organism.
This mixture of diabolical imperfections and divine beauties,
harmonious in spite of discords, for they blended in a species of
savage dignity, also this triumph of a powerful soul over a feeble
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: and presently the other man rose and went, either to look at his own pot or
sleep under the carts; and the large Colonial man was left alone. His fire
was burning satisfactorily about fifty feet off, and he folded his arms on
the ground and rested his forehead on them, and watched lazily the little
black ants that ran about in the red sand, just under his nose.
A great stillness settled down on the camp. Now and again a stick cracked
in the fires, and the cicadas cried aloud in the tree stems; but except
where the solitary paced up and down before the little flat-topped tree in
front of the captain's tent, not a creature stirred in the whole camp; and
the snores of the trooper under the bushes might be heard half across the
camp.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: represented to myself the object of the geometers, which I conceived to be
a continuous body or a space indefinitely extended in length, breadth, and
height or depth, divisible into divers parts which admit of different
figures and sizes, and of being moved or transposed in all manner of ways
(for all this the geometers suppose to be in the object they contemplate),
I went over some of their simplest demonstrations. And, in the first
place, I observed, that the great certitude which by common consent is
accorded to these demonstrations, is founded solely upon this, that they
are clearly conceived in accordance with the rules I have already laid
down In the next place, I perceived that there was nothing at all in these
demonstrations which could assure me of the existence of their object:
Reason Discourse |
