| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: wiped out the existing species--but for this fact some
monster of the Saurozoic epoch might rule today upon
our own world. We see here what might well have occurred
in our own history had conditions been what they have been here.
"Life within Pellucidar is far younger than upon the outer crust.
Here man has but reached a stage analogous to the Stone
Age of our own world's history, but for countless millions
of years these reptiles have been progressing. Possibly it
is the sixth sense which I am sure they possess that has
given them an advantage over the other and more frightfully
armed of their fellows; but this we may never know.
At the Earth's Core |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: simple that they are afraid of using it. Still, they use it
sometimes, and, now and then, one comes across it in popular
newspapers. It is, of course, a ridiculous word to apply to a work
of art. For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a mode of
thought that one cannot express? The public are all morbid,
because the public can never find expression for anything. The
artist is never morbid. He expresses everything. He stands
outside his subject, and through its medium produces incomparable
and artistic effects. To call an artist morbid because he deals
with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called
Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear.'
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: the Z like a rocket rising, /z-z-z-z-zed/; and after pronouncing the
first syllable of the name with great importance, depicted a fall by
the dull brevity of the second.
"Now, how and where does the man live?"
From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity there was no
pause but that required for carrying out our plan. Instead of
loitering about the streets, we both came in, each armed with a novel.
We read with our ears open. And in the perfect silence of our attic
rooms, we heard the even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing.
"He is asleep," said I to Juste, noticing this fact.
"At seven o'clock!" replied the Doctor.
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