| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: it follows that there can be no such "conflict" as that of which
Dr. Draper has undertaken to write the history. The real contest
is between one phase of science and another; between the
more-crude knowledge of yesterday and the less-crude knowledge of
to-day. The contest, indeed, as presented in history, is simply
the measure of the difficulty which men find in exchanging old
views for new ones. All along, the practical question has been,
whether we should passively acquiesce in the crude
generalizations of our ancestors or venture actively to revise
them. But as for the religious sentiment, the perennial struggle
in which it has been engaged has not been with scientific
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: of gravity (for he was now thirty-eight), he still preserved a flower
of youth, due to the sober and ascetic life which he had led. Like all
men of sedentary habits, and statesmen, he had acquired a certainly
reasonable embonpoint. When very young, he bore some resemblance to
Bonaparte; and the likeness still continued, as much as a man with
black eyes and thick, dark hair could resemble a sovereign with blue
eyes and scanty, chestnut hair. But whatever there once was of ardent
and noble ambition in the great author's eyes had been somewhat
quenched by successes. The thoughts with which that brow once teemed
had flowered; the lines of the hollow face were filling out. Ease now
spread its golden tints where, in youth, poverty had laid the yellow
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: there were again the marks of
badger; and some ravellings of a
sack had caught on a briar.
Benjamin climbed over the wall,
into a meadow. He found another
mole trap newly set; he was still
upon the track of Tommy Brock. It
was getting late in the afternoon.
Other rabbits were coming out to
enjoy the evening air. One of them
in a blue coat, by himself, was busily
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