| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: determined to go through with the adventure, I gripped my nailed stick
about the middle and crawled into the little evil-smelling lean-to
after my conductor.
It was a semi-circular space, shaped like the half of a bee-hive;
and against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it was a pile
of variegated fruits, cocoa-nuts among others. Some rough vessels
of lava and wood stood about the floor, and one on a rough stool.
There was no fire. In the darkest corner of the hut sat a shapeless
mass of darkness that grunted "Hey!" as I came in, and my Ape-man
stood in the dim light of the doorway and held out a split cocoa-nut
to me as I crawled into the other corner and squatted down.
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Through half-lit halls which reach no end.
II. THE SCREEN MAIDEN
You read--what is it, then that you are reading?
What music moves so silently in your mind?
Your bright hand turns the page.
I watch you from my window, unsuspected:
You move in an alien land, a silent age . . .
. . . The poet--what was his name--? Tokkei--Tokkei--
The poet walked alone in a cold late rain,
And thought his grief was like the crying of sea-birds;
For his lover was dead, he never would love again.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: thrown a light on many parts of human knowledge, and has solved many
difficulties. We cannot receive his doctrine of opposites as the last word
of philosophy, but still we may regard it as a very important contribution
to logic. We cannot affirm that words have no meaning when taken out of
their connexion in the history of thought. But we recognize that their
meaning is to a great extent due to association, and to their correlation
with one another. We see the advantage of viewing in the concrete what
mankind regard only in the abstract. There is much to be said for his
faith or conviction, that God is immanent in the world,--within the sphere
of the human mind, and not beyond it. It was natural that he himself, like
a prophet of old, should regard the philosophy which he had invented as the
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