| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: pomposity the local dictum, "Soulanges is a town of society and social
pleasures," it must not be supposed that Ville-aux-Fayes accepted this
supremacy. The Gaubertin salon ridiculed ("in petto") the salon
Soudry. By the manner in which Gaubertin remarked, "We are a financial
community, engaged in actual business; we have the folly to fatigue
ourselves in making fortunes," it was easy to perceive a latent
antagonism between the earth and the moon. The moon believed herself
useful to the earth, and the earth governed the moon. Earth and moon,
however, lived in the closest intimacy. At the carnival the leading
society of Soulanges went in a body to four balls given by Gaubertin,
Gendrin, Leclercq, and Soudry, junior. Every Sunday the latter, his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: We may notice the manner in which Socrates himself regards the first five
speeches, not as true, but as fanciful and exaggerated encomiums of the god
Love; (6) the satirical character of them, shown especially in the appeals
to mythology, in the reasons which are given by Zeus for reconstructing the
frame of man, or by the Boeotians and Eleans for encouraging male loves;
(7) the ruling passion of Socrates for dialectics, who will argue with
Agathon instead of making a speech, and will only speak at all upon the
condition that he is allowed to speak the truth. We may note also the
touch of Socratic irony, (8) which admits of a wide application and reveals
a deep insight into the world:--that in speaking of holy things and persons
there is a general understanding that you should praise them, not that you
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: they still continued to see way-marks now to the left and now
to the right of them.
So they travelled on for about ten minutes, when suddenly,
through the slanting screen of wind-driven snow, something
black showed up which moved in front of the horse.
This was another sledge with fellow-travellers. Mukhorty
overtook them, and struck his hoofs against the back of the
sledge in front of them.
'Pass on . . . hey there . . . get in front!' cried voices from
the sledge.
Vasili Andreevich swerved aside to pass the other sledge.
Master and Man |
