| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little
unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it
concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen.
"From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly
rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a
proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to
arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests,
for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the
facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail
expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly
humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: us can hope to form of that in which we live. The obscurest
epoch is to-day; and that for a thousand reasons of inchoate
tendency, conflicting report, and sheer mass and multiplicity
of experience; but chiefly, perhaps, by reason of an
insidious shifting of landmarks. Parties and ideas
continually move, but not by measurable marches on a stable
course; the political soil itself steals forth by
imperceptible degrees, like a travelling glacier, carrying on
its bosom not only political parties but their flag-posts and
cantonments; so that what appears to be an eternal city
founded on hills is but a flying island of Laputa. It is for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: For my own part, I should doubtless have belonged to the latter class, had
I received instruction from but one master, or had I never known the
diversities of opinion that from time immemorial have prevailed among men
of the greatest learning. But I had become aware, even so early as during
my college life, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be
imagined, which has not been maintained by some on of the philosophers;
and afterwards in the course of my travels I remarked that all those whose
opinions are decidedly repugnant to ours are not in that account
barbarians and savages, but on the contrary that many of these nations
make an equally good, if not better, use of their reason than we do. I
took into account also the very different character which a person brought
Reason Discourse |
