| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: intelligent who could make no mistakes; but then, what means the
degradation of His work, and its regeneration? Moreover, a perfect
world is, necessarily, indestructible; its forms would not perish, it
could neither advance nor recede, it would revolve in the everlasting
circumference from which it would never issue. In that case God would
be dependent on His work; it would be co-eternal with Him; and so we
fall back into one of the propositions most antagonistic to God. If
the world is imperfect, it can progress; if perfect, it is stationary.
On the other hand, if it be impossible to admit of a progressive God
ignorant through a past eternity of the results of His creative work,
can there be a stationary God? would not that imply the triumph of
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: nothing but her duplicity and disobedience and his injured honor and
her betrayal of his affection, he coldly (or rather hotly)
determined to banish her from the kingdom. "For," he argued, "I
will love not those who love not me." He therefore cruelly turned
the girl and the child over to the traders of a passing caravan from
a distant land who would take them past the borders of the kingdom.
Even as she saw her father's look of hatred as she was packed into
the wagon at the rear of the caravan, the princess did not alter her
resolve to keep her secret, for now she knew that if the king knew
the truth, her lady in waiting would most certainly be executed. As
for the lady in waiting, she was so stricken with grief over the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: Kaptein. Slowly, and with the greatest care, I proceeded up the kloof,
searching every bush and tuft of grass as I went. It was wonderfully
exciting, work, for I never was sure from one moment to another but that
he would be on me. I took comfort, however, from the reflection that a
lion rarely attacks a man--rarely, I say; sometimes he does, as you will
see--unless he is cornered or wounded. I must have been nearly an hour
hunting after that lion. Once I thought I saw something move in a clump
of tambouki grass, but I could not be sure, and when I trod out the
grass I could not find him.
"At last I worked up to the head of the kloof, which made a cul-de-sac.
It was formed of a wall of rock about fifty feet high. Down this rock
Long Odds |
