| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: which is my favourite stone anyway and was my father's before
me. But what would the ex-Slade professor do about the
letter Y? Or suppose he took the other version, how would he
meet the case, the two N.'s? These things are beyond my
knowledge, which it would perhaps be more descriptive to call
ignorance. But I place the matter in the meanwhile under
your consideration and beg to hear your views. I shall tell
you on some other occasion and when the A.M. is out of
hearing how VERY much I propose to invest in this
testimonial; but I may as well inform you at once that I
intend it to be cheap, sir, damned cheap! My idea of running
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: torment it on the altars of some joyless vice. We cannot do with
such souls; we have no use for them, and it is very easy indeed to
step from that persuasion to the belief that God has no use for
them.
And besides these base people there are the stupid people and the
people with minds so poor in texture that they cannot even grasp the
few broad and simple ideas that seem necessary to the salvation we
experience, who lapse helplessly into fetishistic and fearful
conceptions of God, and are apparently quite incapable of
distinguishing between what is practically and what is spiritually
good.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: The world, like a child, has readily, and for the most part unhesitatingly,
accepted the tale of the Island of Atlantis. In modern times we hardly
seek for traces of the submerged continent; but even Mr. Grote is inclined
to believe in the Egyptian poem of Solon of which there is no evidence in
antiquity; while others, like Martin, discuss the Egyptian origin of the
legend, or like M. de Humboldt, whom he quotes, are disposed to find in it
a vestige of a widely-spread tradition. Others, adopting a different vein
of reflection, regard the Island of Atlantis as the anticipation of a still
greater island--the Continent of America. 'The tale,' says M. Martin,
'rests upon the authority of the Egyptian priests; and the Egyptian priests
took a pleasure in deceiving the Greeks.' He never appears to suspect that
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