| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: palaeontologists, namely Cuvier, Owen, Agassiz, Barrande, Falconer, E.
Forbes, &c., and all our greatest geologists, as Lyell, Murchison,
Sedgwick, &c., have unanimously, often vehemently, maintained the
immutability of species. But I have reason to believe that one great
authority, Sir Charles Lyell, from further reflexion entertains grave
doubts on this subject. I feel how rash it is to differ from these great
authorities, to whom, with others, we owe all our knowledge. Those who
think the natural geological record in any degree perfect, and who do not
attach much weight to the facts and arguments of other kinds given in this
volume, will undoubtedly at once reject my theory. For my part, following
out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the natural geological record, as a history
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: still something of the child about you. Perhaps you have never
thought seriously of what fortune and integrity are. Oh! how your
laugh wounded me. Reflect on that ruined family, always in
distress; poor young girls who have reason to curse you daily; an
old father saying to himself each night: "We might not now be
starving if that man's father had been an honest man--"'"
"Good heavens!" cried Monsieur de Bourbonne, interrupting his nephew,
"surely you have not been such a fool as to tell that woman about your
father's affair with the Bourgneufs? Women know more about wasting a
fortune than making one."
"They know about integrity. But let me read on, uncle."
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: constantly keeps in view. On the whole therefore --
although I am not ignorant that, in many popularly elected
School Boards, there is a reaction in favour of "the cheap system"
as it is called -- I am myself disposed to think that this is one
of the many cases in which expense is the truest economy.
But I must not allow questions of School Board politics to divert me
from my subject. Enough has been said, I trust, to shew
that Recognition by Feeling is not so tedious or indecisive a process
as might have been supposed; and it is obviously more trustworthy
than Recognition by hearing. Still there remains, as has been
pointed out above, the objection that this method is not
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
