| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: outward sense becomes keener and more intense, especially when confined
within narrow limits. The savage with little or no thought has a quicker
discernment of the track than the civilised man; in like manner the dog,
having the help of scent as well as of sight, is superior to the savage.
By use again the inward thought becomes more defined and distinct; what was
at first an effort is made easy by the natural instrumentality of language,
and the mind learns to grasp universals with no more exertion than is
required for the sight of an outward object. There is a natural connexion
and arrangement of them, like the association of objects in a landscape.
Just as a note or two of music suffices to recall a whole piece to the
musician's or composer's mind, so a great principle or leading thought
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: would rise again when the stars were right. Then came out of the
earth the black spirits of earth, mouldy and shadowy, and full
of dim rumours picked up in caverns beneath forgotten sea-bottoms.
But of them old Castro dared not speak much. He cut himself off
hurriedly, and no amount of persuasion or subtlety could elicit
more in this direction. The size of the Old Ones, too, he curiously
declined to mention. Of the cult, he said that he thought the
centre lay amid the pathless desert of Arabia, where Irem, the
City of Pillars, dreams hidden and untouched. It was not allied
to the European witch-cult, and was virtually unknown beyond its
members. No book had ever really hinted of it, though the deathless
Call of Cthulhu |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: "Somebody's memoirs," said Aunt Jane. "Was there no man left
worth writing about, that they should make a biography about
this one? It is like a life of Napoleon with all the battles
left out. They are conceited enough to put his age in the upper
corner of each page too, as if anybody cared how old he was."
"Such pretty covers!" said Kate. "It is too bad."
"Yes," said Aunt Jane. "I mean to send them back and have new
leaves put in. These are so wretched, there is not a teakettle
in the land so insignificant that it would boil over them.
Don't let us talk any more about it. Have Philip and Hope gone
out upon the water?"
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