| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: effort to make oneself heard. Larger grew the sunlit circle above us, and
larger, and all the nearer tunnel sank into a rim of indistinguishable
black. We saw the dead bayonet shrub no longer with any touch of green in
it, but brown and dry and thick, arid the M shadow of its upper branches
high out of sight made a densely interlaced pattern upon the tumbled
rocks. And at the immediate mouth of the tunnel was a wide trampled space
where the mooncalves had come and gone.
We came out upon this space at last into a light and heat that hit and
pressed upon us. We traversed the exposed area painfully, and clambered up
a slope among the scrub stems, and sat down at last panting in a high
place beneath the shadow of a mass of twisted lava. Even in the shade the
The First Men In The Moon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: never deny my teacher, or pretend that the lesson is a discovery of my own;
but I praise his wisdom, and proclaim what I have learned from him. And
now I cannot agree in what you are saying, but I strongly disagree. Well,
I know that this is my own fault, and is a defect in my character, but I
will not pretend to be more than I am; and my opinion, Hippias, is the very
contrary of what you are saying. For I maintain that those who hurt or
injure mankind, and speak falsely and deceive, and err voluntarily, are
better far than those who do wrong involuntarily. Sometimes, however, I am
of the opposite opinion; for I am all abroad in my ideas about this matter,
a condition obviously occasioned by ignorance. And just now I happen to be
in a crisis of my disorder at which those who err voluntarily appear to me
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: should observe a somewhat similar tension of manner, and somewhat
similar points of honour. In each the larger animal keeps a
contemptuous good humour; in each the smaller annoys him with wasp-
like impudence, certain of practical immunity; in each we shall
find a double life producing double characters, and an excursive
and noisy heroism combined with a fair amount of practical
timidity. I have known dogs, and I have known school heroes that,
set aside the fur, could hardly have been told apart; and if we
desire to understand the chivalry of old, we must turn to the
school playfields or the dungheap where the dogs are trooping.
Woman, with the dog, has been long enfranchised. Incessant
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