| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: newness, remaining still a unity. The drama of the individual life
is a mere episode, beneficial or abandoned, in this continuing
adventure of the species. And Metchnikoff finds most of the trouble
of life and the distresses of life in the fact that the species is
still very painfully adjusting itself to the fluctuating conditions
under which it lives. The conflict of life is a continual pursuit
of adjustment, and the "ills of life," of the individual life that
is, are due to its "disharmonies." Man, acutely aware of himself as
an individual adventure and unawakened to himself as a species,
finds life jangling and distressful, finds death frustration. He
fails and falls as a person in what may be the success and triumph
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: "They are all dead, and thou, O King, thou also art dead."
"It were well for thee, thou dog," said Dingaan, "that thou shouldst
make thy meaning plain."
"Let the king pardon me," I answered; "this is my meaning. Thou canst
not kill this white men, for they are not of one race, but of many
races, and the sea is their home; they rise out of the black water.
Destroy those that are here, and others shall come to avenge them,
more and more and more! Now thou hast smitten in thy hour; in theirs
they shall smite in turn. Now THEY lie low in blood at thy hand; in a
day to come, O King, THOU shalt lie low in blood at theirs. Madness
has taken hold of thee, O King, that thou hast done this thing, and
Nada the Lily |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: great linden-tree where, daily, before her formidable mother rose, she
met that charming cousin, Georges de Chaverny.
Faithfully the youth promised to study law and customs. He laid aside
the splendid trappings of the nobility of the sword to wear the
sterner costume of the magistracy.
"I like you better in black," she said.
It was a falsehood, but by that falsehood she comforted her lover for
having thrown his dagger to the winds. The memory of the little
schemes employed to deceive her mother, whose severity seemed great,
brought back to her the soulful joys of that innocent and mutual and
sanctioned love; sometimes a rendezvous beneath the linden, where
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