| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: keep on learning and living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune
which is the occasion of this paper, and by which I was able to see
my literature in print, and to measure experimentally how far I
stood from the favour of the public.
II
The Speculative Society is a body of some antiquity, and has
counted among its members Scott, Brougham, Jeffrey, Horner,
Benjamin Constant, Robert Emmet, and many a legal and local
celebrity besides. By an accident, variously explained, it has its
rooms in the very buildings of the University of Edinburgh: a hall,
Turkey-carpeted, hung with pictures, looking, when lighted up at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: principles and letters or elements of the whole, when they cannot
reasonably be compared by a man of any sense even to syllables or first
compounds. And let me say thus much: I will not now speak of the first
principle or principles of all things, or by whatever name they are to be
called, for this reason--because it is difficult to set forth my opinion
according to the method of discussion which we are at present employing.
Do not imagine, any more than I can bring myself to imagine, that I should
be right in undertaking so great and difficult a task. Remembering what I
said at first about probability, I will do my best to give as probable an
explanation as any other--or rather, more probable; and I will first go
back to the beginning and try to speak of each thing and of all. Once
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: saw that the morning had become more foggy there during the last hour.
She was going silently to her desk when he said, in that distant
tone which implied that he was discharging a disagreeable duty--
"Dorothea, here is a letter for you, which was enclosed in one
addressed to me."
It was a letter of two pages, and she immediately looked at the signature.
"Mr. Ladislaw! What can he have to say to me?" she exclaimed,
in a tone of pleased surprise. "But," she added, looking at
Mr. Casaubon, "I can imagine what he has written to you about."
"You can, if you please, read the letter," said Mr. Casaubon,
severely pointing to it with his pen, and not looking at her.
Middlemarch |
