| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: perfectly understanding that the administration of Madame de Merret's
estate had been the most important event of his life, his reputation,
his glory, his Restoration. As I was forced to bid farewell to my
beautiful reveries and romances, I was to reject learning the truth on
official authority.
" 'Monsieur,' said I, 'would it be indiscreet if I were to ask you the
reasons for such eccentricity?'
"At these words an expression, which revealed all the pleasure which
men feel who are accustomed to ride a hobby, overspread the lawyer's
countenance. He pulled up the collar of his shirt with an air, took
out his snuffbox, opened it, and offered me a pinch; on my refusing,
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: They were also an educational institution: a young person was specially
entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them to
train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely that a
Greek parent committed him to a lover, any more than we should to a
schoolmaster, in the expectation that he would be corrupted by him, but
rather in the hope that his morals would be better cared for than was
possible in a great household of slaves.
It is difficult to adduce the authority of Plato either for or against such
practices or customs, because it is not always easy to determine whether he
is speaking of 'the heavenly and philosophical love, or of the coarse
Polyhymnia:' and he often refers to this (e.g. in the Symposium) half in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: epoch that had arrived; the conception of an end to security and
order and habit. The whole world was at war and it could not get
back to peace, it might never recover peace.
He had thought the things he had seen had been exceptional,
conclusive things, that the besieging of New York and the battle
of the Atlantic were epoch-making events between long years of se
curity. And they had been but the first warning impacts of
universal cataclysm. Each day destruction and hate and disaster
grew, the fissures widened between man and man, new regions of
the fabric of civilisation crumbled and gave way. Below, the
armies grew and the people perished; above, the airships and
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