| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: mental concentration. A real enlargement of human
faculty seemed to have been effected in this direction.
The feats of "calculating boys," the wonders, as Graham
had been wont to regard them, of mesmerisers,
were now within the range of anyone who could afford
the services of a skilled hypnotist. Long ago the old
examination methods in education had been destroyed
by these expedients. Instead of years of study, candidates
had substituted a few weeks of trances, and
during the trances expert coaches had simply to repeat
all the points necessary for adequate answering, adding
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: where, but who lived and lives for ever, for his works follow him.
He, too, tried to solve for his people the mystery of evil; and if
he did not succeed, who has succeeded yet? Warring against Ormuzd,
Ahura Mazda, was Ahriman, Angra Mainyus, literally the being of an
evil mind, the ill-conditioned being. He was labouring perpetually
to spoil the good work of Ormuzd alike in nature and in man. He was
the cause of the fall of man, the tempter, the author of misery and
death; he was eternal and uncreate as Ormuzd was. But that,
perhaps, was a corruption of the purer and older Zoroastrian creed.
With it, if Ahriman were eternal in the past, he would not be
eternal in the future. Somehow, somewhen, somewhere, in the day
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: help he might be emancipated from the government of the rich and
aristocratic, as they are termed. And so he bids him and his companions
depart, just as any other father might drive out of the house a riotous son
and his undesirable associates.
By heaven, he said, then the parent will discover what a monster he has
been fostering in his bosom; and, when he wants to drive him out, he will
find that he is weak and his son strong.
Why, you do not mean to say that the tyrant will use violence? What! beat
his father if he opposes him?
Yes, he will, having first disarmed him.
Then he is a parricide, and a cruel guardian of an aged parent; and this is
The Republic |
