| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: of gravity to the ancient drawbacks and inhibitions. So long as
the emotional influence fails to reach a certain pitch of
efficacy, the changes it produces are unstable, and the man
relapses into his original attitude. But when a certain intensity
is attained by the new emotion, a critical point is passed, and
there then ensues an irreversible revolution, equivalent to the
production of a new nature.
The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a
character is Saintliness.[152] The saintly character is the
character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of
the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: as the paw of a tiger. One day, because the ring-master called him a
frog-eater, or something like that and maybe a little worse, he shoved him
against the soft pine background he used in his knife-throwing act, so quick
the ring-master didn't have time to think, and there, before the audience, De
Ville kept the air on fire with his knives, sinking them into the wood all
around the ring-master so close that they passed through his clothes and most
of them bit into his skin.
"The clowns had to pull the knives out to get him loose, for he was pinned
fast. So the word went around to watch out for De Ville, and no one dared be
more than barely civil to his wife. And she was a sly bit of baggage, too,
only all hands were afraid of De Ville.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: men of the past. Let us take another,--Aristides, the son of Lysimachus:
would you not acknowledge that he was a good man?
ANYTUS: To be sure I should.
SOCRATES: And did not he train his son Lysimachus better than any other
Athenian in all that could be done for him by the help of masters? But
what has been the result? Is he a bit better than any other mortal? He is
an acquaintance of yours, and you see what he is like. There is Pericles,
again, magnificent in his wisdom; and he, as you are aware, had two sons,
Paralus and Xanthippus.
ANYTUS: I know.
SOCRATES: And you know, also, that he taught them to be unrivalled
|
