| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: which I provoked, and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid
upon me,--the word of God, I thought, ought to be considered first. And I
said to myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out the
meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear!
--for I must tell you the truth--the result of my mission was just this: I
found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that
others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the
tale of my wanderings and of the 'Herculean' labours, as I may call them,
which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the
politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And
there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: idea that had its beginning in his mind; or he may begin a sentence
and finish it in thought. To other men he seems insane; to me, living
as I do in his mind, his ideas are quite lucid. I follow the road his
spirit travels; and though I do not know every turning, I can reach
the goal with him.
"Which of us has not often known what it is to think of some futile
thing and be led on to some serious reflection through the ideas or
memories it brings in its train? Not unfrequently, after speaking
about some trifle, the simple starting-point of a rapid train of
reflections, a thinker may forget or be silent as to the abstract
connection of ideas leading to his conclusion, and speak again only to
Louis Lambert |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: the corpse with a certain amount of awe and terrible expectation.
Besides -- I could not extract from my memory that hideous, inhuman
shriek we heard on the night we tried our first experiment in
the deserted farmhouse at Arkham.
Very little time had elapsed
before I saw the attempt was not to be a total failure. A touch
of colour came to cheeks hitherto chalk-white, and spread out
under the curiously ample stubble of sandy beard. West, who had
his hand on the pulse of the left wrist, suddenly nodded significantly;
and almost simultaneously a mist appeared on the mirror inclined
above the body’s mouth. There followed a few spasmodic muscular
Herbert West: Reanimator |
