| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: flower, before the stigma of that individual flower is ready to receive
them; and as this flower is never visited, at least in my garden, by
insects, it never sets a seed, though by placing pollen from one flower on
the stigma of another, I raised plenty of seedlings; and whilst another
species of Lobelia growing close by, which is visited by bees, seeds
freely. In very many other cases, though there be no special mechanical
contrivance to prevent the stigma of a flower receiving its own pollen,
yet, as C. C. Sprengel has shown, and as I can confirm, either the anthers
burst before the stigma is ready for fertilisation, or the stigma is ready
before the pollen of that flower is ready, so that these plants have in
fact separated sexes, and must habitually be crossed. How strange are
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: [63] Now within two years, Mr. Paine's C-minor symphony has
followed the completion of his oratorio.
[64] These peculiar associations are no doubt what is chiefly
enjoyed in music, antecedent to a properly musical culture.
Persons of slight acquaintance with music invariably prefer the
voice to the piano.
Rightly considered, the question between vocal and instrumental
music amounts to this, What does music express? This is a great
psychological question, and we have not now the space or the
leisure requisite for discussing it, even in the most summary
way. We will say, however, that we do not see how music can in
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: Where are they?" says Smith again. "Here they are," says he;
"here's our captain and fifty men with him, have been hunting you
these two hours; the boatswain is killed; Will Fry is wounded, and
I am a prisoner; and if you do not yield you are all lost." "Will
they give us quarter, then?" says Tom Smith, "and we will yield."
"I'll go and ask, if you promise to yield," said Robinson: so he
asked the captain, and the captain himself then calls out, "You,
Smith, you know my voice; if you lay down your arms immediately and
submit, you shall have your lives, all but Will Atkins."
Upon this Will Atkins cried out, "For God's sake, captain, give me
quarter; what have I done? They have all been as bad as I:" which,
Robinson Crusoe |
