| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.
We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking
possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued
at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil.
But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would
be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst
of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping.
of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling,
under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage.
The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black
and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: forbidden among the ancients. The Egyptians, Herodotus tells us,
used to pursue with stones and curses the embalmers as soon as they
had performed their unpleasant office; and though Herophilus and
Erasistratus are said to have dissected many subjects under the
protection of Ptolemy Soter in Alexandria itself: yet the public
feeling of the Greeks as well as of the Romans continued the same as
that of the ancient Egyptians; and Galen was fain--as Vesalius
proved--to supplement his ignorance of the human frame by describing
that of an ape. Dissection was equally forbidden among the
Mussulmans; and the great Arabic physicians could do no more than
comment on Galen. The same prejudice extended through the Middle
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: simple of nature's laws, you will meet at every turn with devices
for the beautifying of life, which may stand not unworthily beside
the products of nature's own skill. Whatever these people fashion,
from the toy of an hour to the triumphs of all time, is touched by a
taste unknown elsewhere. To stroll down the Broadway of Tokio of an
evening is a liberal education in everyday art. As you enter it
there opens out in front of you a fairy-like vista of illumination.
Two long lines of gayly lighted shops, stretching off into the
distance, look out across two equally endless rows of torch-lit
booths, the decorous yellow gleam of the one contrasting strangely
with the demoniacal red flare of the other. This perspective of
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