| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: my life what I want to do. Myrtle asked me this
morning if I wasn't going to plow the south field.
Well, I ain't going to plow the south field. I ain't
going to make a garden. I ain't going to try for
hay in the ten-acre lot. I have stopped. I have
worked for nothing except just enough to keep soul
and body together. I have had bad luck. But that
isn't the real reason why I have stopped. Look at
here, Mr. Wheaton, spring is coming. I have never
in my life had a chance at the spring nor the summer.
This year I'm going to have the spring and the sum-
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: pathology; the second is the suicide of despair; and the third the
suicide based on logical argument. Despair and deductive reasoning had
brought Lucien to this pass, but both varieties are curable; it is
only the pathological suicide that is inevitable. Not infrequently you
find all three causes combined, as in the case of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau.
Lucien having made up his mind fell to considering methods. The poet
would fain die as became a poet. At first he thought of throwing
himself into the Charente and making an end then and there; but as he
came down the steps from Beaulieu for the last time, he heard the
whole town talking of his suicide; he saw the horrid sight of a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: its belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks,
consequently these very instincts will be most branded and
defamed. The lofty independent spirituality, the will to stand
alone, and even the cogent reason, are felt to be dangers,
everything that elevates the individual above the herd, and is a
source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called EVIL, the
tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalizing disposition,
the MEDIOCRITY of desires, attains to moral distinction and
honour. Finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is
always less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings
to severity and rigour, and now every form of severity, even in
Beyond Good and Evil |
