| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: an ingenious paper by Mr. Wallace, in which he concludes, that 'every
species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a
pre-existing closely allied species.' And I now know from correspondence,
that this coincidence he attributes to generation with modification.
The previous remarks on 'single and multiple centres of creation' do not
directly bear on another allied question,--namely whether all the
individuals of the same species have descended from a single pair, or
single hermaphrodite, or whether, as some authors suppose, from many
individuals simultaneously created. With those organic beings which never
intercross (if such exist), the species, on my theory, must have descended
from a succession of improved varieties, which will never have blended with
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: people about who idolized Shakespear as American ladies idolize
Paderewski, and who carried Bardolatry, even in the Bard's own time,
to an extent that threatened to make his reasonable admirers
ridiculous.
Shakespear's Pessimism
I submit to Mr Harris that by ruling out this idolatry, and its
possible effect in making Shakespear think that his public would stand
anything from him, he has ruled out a far more plausible explanation
of the faults of such a play as Timon of Athens than his theory that
Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady "cankered and took on proud
flesh in him, and tortured him to nervous breakdown and madness." In
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: in what is called running-hand.
The supper was absolutely devoid of spirit. Peyrade was visibly
absent-minded. Of the men about town who give life to a supper, only
Rastignac and Lucien were present. Lucien was gloomy and absorbed in
thought; Rastignac, who had lost two thousand francs before supper,
ate and drank with the hope of recovering them later. The three women,
stricken by this chill, looked at each other. Dulness deprived the
dishes of all relish. Suppers, like plays and books, have their good
and bad luck.
At the end of the meal ices were served, of the kind called
plombieres. As everybody knows, this kind of dessert has delicate
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