| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: home with you and shall be better able to explain the nature of the charm,
about which I felt a difficulty before. For the charm will do more,
Charmides, than only cure the headache. I dare say that you have heard
eminent physicians say to a patient who comes to them with bad eyes, that
they cannot cure his eyes by themselves, but that if his eyes are to be
cured, his head must be treated; and then again they say that to think of
curing the head alone, and not the rest of the body also, is the height of
folly. And arguing in this way they apply their methods to the whole body,
and try to treat and heal the whole and the part together. Did you ever
observe that this is what they say?
Yes, he said.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: respect which they showed their teacher, and the way in which
they went about their work, delighted me. The discipline it gave
them, the self-respect it engendered, and the power of
acquisition that came with it were worth more perhaps than the
knowledge they acquired, useful as that information must have
been.
The Princess Ka-la-chin, the fifth sister of Prince Su, is
married to the Mongolian Prince Ka-la. It is a rule among the
Manchus that no prince can marry a princess of their own people,
but like the Emperor himself, must seek their wives from among
the untitled. These ladies after their marriage are raised to the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: That lay outside man's havoc and affairs,
And yet was not all hostile to their tumult,
Where poets would have served and honored him,
And saved him, had there been anything to save.
But there was nothing, and his tethered range
Was only a small desert. Kings of song
Are not for thrones in deserts. Towers of sound
And flowers of sense are but a waste of heaven
Where there is none to know them from the rocks
And sand-grass of his own monotony
That makes earth less than earth. He could see that,
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