| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: led to the stake exclaimed: "Though I have no hope of recompense
hereafter, yet the love of truth constraineth me to die in its
defence!"
With the truth or completeness of these views of Lessing we are
not here concerned; our business being not to expound our own
opinions, but to indicate as clearly as possible Lessing's
position. Those who are familiar with the general philosophical
spirit of the present age, as represented by writers otherwise so
different as Littre and Sainte-Beuve, will best appreciate the
power and originality of these speculations. Coming in the last
century, amid the crudities of deism, they made a well-defined
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish
grain of the pumpkin pine. We waded so gently and reverently, or we
pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not
scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came
and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western
sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and
dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a
fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which
earth offered no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter!
to converse with whom was a New England Night's Entertainment. Ah!
such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: which had a laughable effect. I felt the weight of Dona Rita grow
on my arm and thought it best to let her sink on the floor, wishing
to be free in my movements and really afraid that now he had
actually heard a noise he would infallibly burst the door. But he
didn't even thump it. He seemed to have exhausted himself in that
scream. There was no other light in the room but the darkened glow
of the embers and I could hardly make out amongst the shadows of
furniture Dona Rita sunk on her knees in a penitential and
despairing attitude. Before this collapse I, who had been
wrestling desperately with her a moment before, felt that I dare
not touch her. This emotion, too, I could not understand; this
The Arrow of Gold |
