| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: of a religious sect. Yet, doubtless, there was some first impression
derived from external nature, which, as in mythology, so also in
philosophy, worked upon the minds of the first thinkers. Though incapable
of induction or generalization in the modern sense, they caught an
inspiration from the external world. The most general facts or appearances
of nature, the circle of the universe, the nutritive power of water, the
air which is the breath of life, the destructive force of fire, the seeming
regularity of the greater part of nature and the irregularity of a remnant,
the recurrence of day and night and of the seasons, the solid earth and the
impalpable aether, were always present to them.
The great source of error and also the beginning of truth to them was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: life.
11
No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out--
a refrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening dress--
children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one
said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For
now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by
herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of--to think;
well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and
the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk,
with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of
To the Lighthouse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: want," declared Schinner; "then you would silence criticism with a
master-stroke."
Such speeches, which alarmed the good Agathe, only corroborated the
judgment she had long since formed upon Philippe and Joseph. Facts
sustained that judgment in the mind of a woman who had never ceased to
be a provincial. Philippe, her favorite child, was he not the great
man of the family at last? in his early errors she saw only the
ebullitions of youth. Joseph, to the merit of whose productions she
was insensible, for she saw them too long in process of gestation to
admire them when finished, seemed to her no more advanced in 1828 than
he was in 1816. Poor Joseph owed money, and was bowed down by the
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