| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances
you; and you and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and
conversing with them without meat or drink, if that were possible--you only
want to look at them and to be with them. But what if man had eyes to see
the true beauty--the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed,
not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and
vanities of human life--thither looking, and holding converse with the true
beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding
beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not
images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a
reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: to me, she said, smiling, there was money in the house;
and she repeated that when once the Italians like you they
are your friends for life); and when we had gone into this
she asked me about my giro, my impressions, the places
I had seen. I told her what I could, making it up partly,
I am afraid, as in my depression I had not seen much;
and after she had heard me she exclaimed, quite as if she
had forgotten her aunt and her sorrow, "Dear, dear, how much
I should like to do such things--to take a little journey!"
It came over me for the moment that I ought to propose some tour,
say I would take her anywhere she liked; and I remarked
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: enfeebled by its own excesses, the legislator conceived the rash
project of annihilating its power, instead of instructing it and
correcting its vices; no attempt was made to fit it to govern,
but all were bent on excluding it from the government.
The consequence of this has been that the democratic
revolution has been effected only in the material parts of
society, without that concomitant change in laws, ideas, customs,
and manners which was necessary to render such a revolution
beneficial. We have gotten a democracy, but without the
conditions which lessen its vices and render its natural
advantages more prominent; and although we already perceive the
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