| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Oh, yes; the hay," said Woot. "What are you waiting
for, Captain Fyter?"
At once the Tin Soldier set to work cutting hay with
his sword and in a few minutes there was quite enough
with which to stuff the Scarecrow's body. Woot and
Polychrome did this and it was no easy task because the
hay packed together more than straw and as they had
little experience in such work their job, when
completed, left the Scarecrow's arms and legs rather
bunchy. Also there was a hump on his back which made
Woot laugh and say it reminded him of a camel, but it
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: nature is sympathetically sentient. His admiration, instead of
being centred on man, embraces the universe. His art reflects it.
Leaving out of consideration, for the moment, minor though still
important distinctions in tone, treatment, and technique, the great
fundamental difference between Western and Far Eastern art lies in
its attitude toward humanity.
With us, from the time of the Greeks to the present day, man has
been the cynosure of artistic eyes; with them he has never been
vouchsafed more than a casual, not to say a cursory glance, even
woman failing to rivet his attention. One of our own writers has
said that, without passing the bounds of due respect, a man is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: assimilable to the worship of the true God of mankind.
It is too often supposed that the religious tendency of the East is
entirely towards other-worldness, to a treatment of this life as an
evil entanglement and of death as a release and a blessing. It is
too easily assumed that Eastern teaching is wholly concerned with
renunciation, not merely of self but of being, with the escape from
all effort of any sort into an exalted vacuity. This is indeed
neither the spirit of China nor of Islam nor of the every-day life
of any people in the world. It is not the spirit of the Sikh nor of
these newer developments of Hindu thought. It has never been the
spirit of Japan. To-day less than ever does Asia seem disposed to
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