| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: in deep alcoves, were divans with mattings and head-rests for
opium smokers. The walls were painted blue and hung with vertical
Cantonese legends in red and silver, while all around the sides of
the room small ebony tables alternated with ebony stools, each
inlaid with a slab of mottled marble. A chandelier, all a-glitter
with tinsel, swung from the centre of the ceiling over a huge
round table of mahogany.
And not a soul was there to disturb them. Below them, out there
around the old Plaza, the city drummed through its work with a
lazy, soothing rumble. Nearer at hand, Chinatown sent up the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: in the course of one's calling, is the work which God requires
of us. Over against the wide-spread opinion, as though the will
of God as declared in the Ten Commandments referred only to the
outward work always especially mentioned, Luther's argument must
have called to mind the explanation of the Law, which the Lord
had given in the Sermon on the Mount, when he taught men to
recognize only the extreme point and manifestation of a whole
trend of thought in the work prohibited by the text, and when he
directed Christians not to rest in the keeping of the literal
requirement of each Commandment, but from this point of vantage
to inquire into the whole depth and breadth of God's will --
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: labour would, at least for a time, reassert itself; men would look about
for stones and sticks with which to make weapons to repel wild beasts and
enemies, and would go a-hunting meat and fighting savage enemies and tend
the beasts when tamed: (The young captured animals would probably be tamed
and reared by the women.) women would suckle their children, cook the meat
men brought, build shelters, look for roots and if possible cultivate them;
there certainly would be no parasite in the society; the woman who refused
to labour for her offspring, and the man who refused to hunt or defend
society, would not be supported by their fellows, would soon be
extinguished by want. As wild beasts were extinguished and others tamed
and the materials for war improved, fewer men would be needed for hunting
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