| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: keep myself entirely concealed where I was, unless I found a better
sort of creatures than cannibals to make myself known to. Yet I
entertained such an abhorrence of the savage wretches that I have
been speaking of, and of the wretched, inhuman custom of their
devouring and eating one another up, that I continued pensive and
sad, and kept close within my own circle for almost two years after
this: when I say my own circle, I mean by it my three plantations -
viz. my castle, my country seat (which I called my bower), and my
enclosure in the woods: nor did I look after this for any other use
than an enclosure for my goats; for the aversion which nature gave
me to these hellish wretches was such, that I was as fearful of
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: with which their valleys were lately filled. So greatly has the climate of
Europe changed, that in Northern Italy, gigantic moraines, left by old
glaciers, are now clothed by the vine and maize. Throughout a large part
of the United States, erratic boulders, and rocks scored by drifted
icebergs and coast-ice, plainly reveal a former cold period.
The former influence of the glacial climate on the distribution of the
inhabitants of Europe, as explained with remarkable clearness by Edward
Forbes, is substantially as follows. But we shall follow the changes more
readily, by supposing a new glacial period to come slowly on, and then pass
away, as formerly occurred. As the cold came on, and as each more southern
zone became fitted for arctic beings and ill-fitted for their former more
On the Origin of Species |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: In the instant's pause and thought an idea occurred to him.
He would attempt it. Turning back to the tumbled wall,
he seized one of the large, flat slabs that had composed it.
Hastily making one end of his rope fast to the piece of granite,
he returned to the shaft, and, coiling the balance of the rope on
the floor beside him, the ape-man took the heavy slab in both
hands, and, swinging it several times to get the distance and
the direction fixed, he let the weight fly up at a slight angle,
so that, instead of falling straight back into the shaft again,
it grazed the far edge, tumbling over into the court beyond.
Tarzan dragged for a moment upon the slack end of the
The Return of Tarzan |
