| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: that shall be permanently preserved. This world may indeed, as
science assures us, some day burn up or freeze; but if it is part
of his order, the old ideals are sure to be brought elsewhere to
fruition, so that where God is, tragedy is only provisional and
partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely
final things. Only when this farther step of faith concerning
God is taken, and remote objective consequences are predicted,
does religion, as it seems to me, get wholly free from the first
immediate subjective experience, and bring a REAL HYPOTHESIS into
play. A good hypothesis in science must have other properties
than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: it lay at the root of the imputation that he imported novel
divinities; though there was no greater novelty in his case than in
that of other believers in oracular help, who commonly rely on omens
of all sorts: the flight or cry of birds, the utterances of man,
chance meetings,[3] or a victim's entrails. Even according to the
popular conception, it is not the mere fowl, it is not the chance
individual one meets, who knows what things are profitable for a man,
but it is the gods who vouchsafe by such instruments to signify the
same. This was also the tenet of Socrates. Only, whereas men
ordinarily speak of being turned aside, or urged onwards by birds, or
other creatures encountered on the path, Socrates suited his language
The Memorabilia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: still have some business to finish."
"Take care what you are saying, monsieur," said she, interrupting him.
"My mother says that when a man begins to talk about his business, he
is ceasing to love."
"Caroline! Am I not here? Have I not stolen this hour from my
pitiless--"
"Hush!" said she, laying a finger on his mouth. "Don't you see that I
am in jest."
They had now come back to the drawing-room, and Roger's eye fell on an
object brought home that morning by the cabinetmaker. Caroline's old
rosewood embroidery-frame, by which she and her mother had earned
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