| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: off their shadow ere it was time to lie down and to renew them. I
cannot tell how long it was that he endured this discipline; but it
was long enough to leave a great black blot upon his memory, long
enough to send him, trembling for his reason, to the doors of a
certain doctor; whereupon with a simple draught he was restored to
the common lot of man.
The poor gentleman has since been troubled by nothing of the sort;
indeed, his nights were for some while like other men's, now blank,
now chequered with dreams, and these sometimes charming, sometimes
appalling, but except for an occasional vividness, of no
extraordinary kind. I will just note one of these occasions, ere I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: captains. Her treasury was empty. The tribute to Rome was crushing
her. "We are quite at a loss what to do! She is much to be pitied!"
From time to time he would rub his limbs with his aloe-wood spatula,
or perhaps he would break off to drink a ptisan made of the ashes of a
weasel and asparagus boiled in vinegar from a silver cup handed to him
by a slave; then he would wipe his lips with a scarlet napkin and
resume:
"What used to be worth a shekel of silver is now worth three shekels
of gold, while the cultivated lands which were abandoned during the
war bring in nothing! Our purpura fisheries are nearly gone, and even
pearls are becoming exhorbitant; we have scarcely unguents enough for
Salammbo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: of the difficulties which are involved in the assumption of absolute ideas;
the learner will find them nearly impossible to understand, and the teacher
who has to impart them will require superhuman ability; there will always
be a suspicion, either that they have no existence, or are beyond human
knowledge.' 'There I agree with you,' said Socrates. 'Yet if these
difficulties induce you to give up universal ideas, what becomes of the
mind? and where are the reasoning and reflecting powers? philosophy is at
an end.' 'I certainly do not see my way.' 'I think,' said Parmenides,
'that this arises out of your attempting to define abstractions, such as
the good and the beautiful and the just, before you have had sufficient
previous training; I noticed your deficiency when you were talking with
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