| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: I came out of the bushes, and, revolver in hand, walked down towards
these seated figures. One, a Wolf-woman, turned her head and stared
at me, and then the others. None attempted to rise or salute me.
I felt too faint and weary to insist, and I let the moment pass.
"I want food," said I, almost apologetically, and drawing near.
"There is food in the huts," said an Ox-boar-man, drowsily,
and looking away from me.
I passed them, and went down into the shadow and odours of the almost
deserted ravine. In an empty hut I feasted on some specked
and half-decayed fruit; and then after I had propped some branches
and sticks about the opening, and placed myself with my face
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: then you have made a convention with yourself, and the correctness of a
name turns out to be convention, since letters which are unlike are
indicative equally with those which are like, if they are sanctioned by
custom and convention. And even supposing that you distinguish custom from
convention ever so much, still you must say that the signification of words
is given by custom and not by likeness, for custom may indicate by the
unlike as well as by the like. But as we are agreed thus far, Cratylus
(for I shall assume that your silence gives consent), then custom and
convention must be supposed to contribute to the indication of our
thoughts; for suppose we take the instance of number, how can you ever
imagine, my good friend, that you will find names resembling every
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: believe, even before proof, that there are two sides. It cannot
be without good and sufficient reason that the British public
remains all but indifferent to sanitary reform; that though the
science of epidemics, as a science, has been before the world for
more than twenty years, nobody believes in it enough to act upon
it, save some few dozen of fanatics, some of whom have (it cannot
be denied) a direct pecuniary interest in disturbing what they
choose to term the poison-manufactories of free and independent
Britons.
Yes; we should surely respect the expressed will and conviction of
the most practical of nations, arrived at after the experience of
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