| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: tall, and walked as if trained. They all closed in
with evident purpose. Her story then was true!
Springing to his feet, he looked around for a weapon,
loose stone, means of escape, anything. By this time
the nearest man was upon him.
"It is no use, sir," he said. "There are sixteen of us
on the Plain, and the whole country is reared."
"Let her finish her sleep!" he implored in a whisper of
the men as they gathered round.
When they saw where she lay, which they had not done
till then, they showed no objection, and stood watching
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: embodied by him in the contrast between Socrates and Ion. Yet here, as in
the Republic, Socrates shows a sympathy with the poetic nature. Also, the
manner in which Ion is affected by his own recitations affords a lively
illustration of the power which, in the Republic, Socrates attributes to
dramatic performances over the mind of the performer. His allusion to his
embellishments of Homer, in which he declares himself to have surpassed
Metrodorus of Lampsacus and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, seems to show that,
like them, he belonged to the allegorical school of interpreters. The
circumstance that nothing more is known of him may be adduced in
confirmation of the argument that this truly Platonic little work is not a
forgery of later times.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: door; they offered her their horses; they begged her to marry them when
they dared. Partly, there was something noble and heroic in this devotion
of men to the best woman they knew; partly there was something natural in
it, that these men, shut off from the world, should pour at the feet of one
woman the worship that otherwise would have been given to twenty; and
partly there was something mean in their envy of one another. If she had
raised her little finger, I suppose, she might have married any one out of
twenty of them.
Then I came. I do not think I was prettier; I do not think I was so pretty
as she was. I was certainly not as handsome. But I was vital, and I was
new, and she was old--they all forsook her and followed me. They
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