| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: characteristic, is less vividly described:--
"I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a period
of intimate communion with the divine. These meetings came
unasked and unexpected, and seemed to consist merely in the
temporary obliteration of the conventionalities which usually
surround and cover my life. . . . Once it was when from the
summit of a high mountain I looked over a gashed and corrugated
landscape extending to a long convex of ocean that ascended to
the horizon, and again from the same point when I could see
nothing beneath me but a boundless expanse of white cloud, on the
blown surface of which a few high peaks, including the one I was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: Bare victual for the mowers: and Geraint
Had ruth again on Enid looking pale:
Then, moving downward to the meadow ground,
He, when the fair-haired youth came by him, said,
'Friend, let her eat; the damsel is so faint.'
'Yea, willingly,' replied the youth; 'and thou,
My lord, eat also, though the fare is coarse,
And only meet for mowers;' then set down
His basket, and dismounting on the sward
They let the horses graze, and ate themselves.
And Enid took a little delicately,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: "Everywhere - in the whole treatment of his case. Extract the
opinion, disengage the answer - those are the real acts of homage."
Mr. Morrow, after a minute, tossed the book away. "Ah but you
mustn't take me for a reviewer."
"Heaven forbid I should take you for anything so dreadful! You
came down to perform a little act of sympathy, and so, I may
confide to you, did I. Let us perform our little act together.
These pages overflow with the testimony we want: let us read them
and taste them and interpret them. You'll of course have perceived
for yourself that one scarcely does read Neil Paraday till one
reads him aloud; he gives out to the ear an extraordinary full
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