| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: acts solely by the preservation of profitable modifications, each new form
will tend in a fully-stocked country to take the place of, and finally to
exterminate, its own less improved parent or other less-favoured forms with
which it comes into competition. Thus extinction and natural selection
will, as we have seen, go hand in hand. Hence, if we look at each species
as descended from some other unknown form, both the parent and all the
transitional varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very
process of formation and perfection of the new form.
But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed,
why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the
earth? It will be much more convenient to discuss this question in the
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: was Hamilcar's reply, the safe-conduct that he sent them.
They had nothing to fear; any change of fortune brought with it the
end of their woes. They were moved with extravagant joy, they embraced
one another, they wept. Spendius, Autaritus, and Zarxas, four
Italiotes, a Negro and two Spartans offered themselves as envoys. They
were immediately accepted. They did not know, however, by what means
they should get away.
But a cracking sounded in the direction of the rocks; and the most
elevated of them, after rocking to and fro, rebounded to the bottom.
In fact, if they were immovable on the side of the Barbarians--for it
would have been necessary to urge them up an incline plane, and they
Salammbo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: The washing had now become very fine--fine beyond all need of ordinary
placer-mining. He worked the black sand, a small portion at a time, up the
shallow rim of the pan. Each small portion he examined sharply, so that his
eyes saw every grain of it before he allowed it to slide over the edge and
away. Jealously, bit by bit, he let the black sand slip away. A golden speck,
no larger than a pin-point, appeared on the rim, and by his manipulation of
the riveter it returned to the bottom of tile pan. And in such fashion another
speck was disclosed, and another. Great was his care of them. Like a shepherd
he herded his flock of golden specks so that not one should be lost. At last,
of the pan of dirt nothing remained but his golden herd. He counted it, and
then, after all his labor, sent it flying out of the pan with one final swirl
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