| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: remains to be seen whether the good nun will perform her part of the
contract.
Well, madame, strange to say, after hearing and inquiring into the
whole matter I shall not be surprised if this remarkable woman should
carry the day. From the description our friend gives of her, Mother
Marie-des-Anges is a small woman, short and thick-set, whose face is
prepossessing and agreeable beneath its wrinkles and the mask of
saffron-tinted pallor which time and the austerities of a cloister
have placed upon it. Carrying very lightly the weight of her
corpulence and also that of her seventy-six years, she is lively,
alert, and frisky to a degree that shames the youngest of us. For
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: was then that the distant towers of York, and the
bloody streams of the Derwent,* beheld that direful
* Note D. Battle of Stamford.
conflict, in which, after displaying the most undaunted
valour, the King of Norway, and Tosti,
both fell, with ten thousand of their bravest followers.
Who would have thought that upon the proud
day when this battle was won, the very gale which
waved the Saxon banners in triumph, was filling
the Norman sails, and impelling them to the fatal
shores of Sussex?---Who would have thought that
Ivanhoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: Zeno and Parmenides themselves. The contradictions which follow from the
hypotheses of the one and many have been regarded by some as transcendental
mysteries; by others as a mere illustration, taken at random, of a new
method. They seem to have been inspired by a sort of dialectical frenzy,
such as may be supposed to have prevailed in the Megarian School (compare
Cratylus, etc.). The criticism on his own doctrine of Ideas has also been
considered, not as a real criticism, but as an exuberance of the
metaphysical imagination which enabled Plato to go beyond himself. To the
latter part of the dialogue we may certainly apply the words in which he
himself describes the earlier philosophers in the Sophist: 'They went on
their way rather regardless of whether we understood them or not.'
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