| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in
discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and
yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was
to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye;
something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but
which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner
face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was
austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a
taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had not
crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved
tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: did here."
"But the difficulty is, monsieur," said Gerard,--"if I may speak to
you with the freedom of the confessional,--I look upon faith as a lie
we tell to ourselves, on hope as a lie we tell about the future, and
on charity as a trick for children to keep them good by the promise of
sugar-plums."
"Still, we sleep better for being rocked by hope, monsieur," said
Madame Graslin.
This speech stopped Roubaud, who was about to reply; its effect was
strengthened by a look from Grossetete and the rector.
"Is it our fault," said Clousier, "that Jesus Christ had not the time
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: sphere of science and human action are tending to go beyond facts. They
are thought to be innate, because they have been familiar to us all our
lives, and we can no longer dismiss them from our mind. Many of them
express relations of terms to which nothing exactly or nothing at all in
rerum natura corresponds. We are not such free agents in the use of them
as we sometimes imagine. Fixed ideas have taken the most complete
possession of some thinkers who have been most determined to renounce them,
and have been vehemently affirmed when they could be least explained and
were incapable of proof. The world has often been led away by a word to
which no distinct meaning could be attached. Abstractions such as
'authority,' 'equality,' 'utility,' 'liberty,' 'pleasure,' 'experience,'
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