| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: PROTARCHUS: That is very probable.
SOCRATES: And the restoration of harmony and return to nature is the
source of pleasure, if I may be allowed to speak in the fewest and shortest
words about matters of the greatest moment.
PROTARCHUS: I believe that you are right, Socrates; but will you try to be
a little plainer?
SOCRATES: Do not obvious and every-day phenomena furnish the simplest
illustration?
PROTARCHUS: What phenomena do you mean?
SOCRATES: Hunger, for example, is a dissolution and a pain.
PROTARCHUS: True.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: silver breasted birds bursting with the shrill ecstasy of life in
nesting time. All is hot and fierce and passionate, ardent and
unashamed in its exulting and importunate desire for life and
love. And, do you know that the scarlet lilies are woven petal by
petal from my heart's blood, these little quivering birds are my
soul made incarnate music, these heavy perfumes are my emotions
dissolved into aerial essence, this flaming blue and gold sky is
the 'very me,' that part of me that incessantly and in- solently,
yes, and a little deliberately, triumphs over that other part--a
thing of nerves and tissues that suffers and cries out, and that
must die to-morrow perhaps, or twenty years hence."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: bunks in a double tier, nine on either hand, where from
eighteen to thirty-six miners had once snored together all
night long, John Stanley, perhaps, snoring loudest. There
was the roof, with a hole in it through which the sun now
shot an arrow. There was the floor, in much the same state
as the one below, though, perhaps, there was more hay, and
certainly there was the added ingredient of broken glass, the
man who stole the window-frames having apparently made a
miscarriage with this one. Without a broom, without hay or
bedding, we could but look about us with a beginning of
despair. The one bright arrow of day, in that gaunt and
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