| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: the same conspiracy.--What is it to me which end of my son comes foremost
into the world, provided all goes right after, and his cerebellum escapes
uncrushed?
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that
it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the
first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every
thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.
When my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a
phaenomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by
it;--it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the
family.--Poor devil, he would say,--he made way for the capacity of his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: doing by me. Aren't you encouraging them in evil
ways?"
Annie started, and turned and stared at him.
Benny nodded. "I can't see any difference," he
said. "There isn't a day but one of the girls thinks
she has done something you have done, or hasn't
done something you ought to have done, and they
blame you all the time, when you don't deserve it,
and you let them, and they don't know it, and I
don't think myself that they know they tell whop-
pers; but they ought to know. Strikes me you are
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: taking the place of God. Theology, again, is full of undefined terms which
have distracted the human mind for ages. Mankind have reasoned from them,
but not to them; they have drawn out the conclusions without proving the
premises; they have asserted the premises without examining the terms. The
passions of religious parties have been roused to the utmost about words of
which they could have given no explanation, and which had really no
distinct meaning. One sort of them, faith, grace, justification, have been
the symbols of one class of disputes; as the words substance, nature,
person, of another, revelation, inspiration, and the like, of a third. All
of them have been the subject of endless reasonings and inferences; but a
spell has hung over the minds of theologians or philosophers which has
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