| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: the hermit of Engaddi stepped forward, and assumed the air of one
charged with higher commands than those of a mere earthly
potentate. Indeed, his dress of shaggy skins, his uncombed and
untrimmed hair and beard, his lean, wild, and contorted features,
and the almost insane fire which gleamed from under his bushy
eyebrows, made him approach nearly to our idea of some seer of
Scripture, who, charged with high mission to the sinful Kings of
Judah or Israel, descended from the rocks and caverns in which he
dwelt in abstracted solitude, to abash earthly tyrants in the
midst of their pride, by discharging on them the blighting
denunciations of Divine Majesty, even as the cloud discharges the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: (episteme);--and indeed if this be denied, there is no seeing how there can
be any good men at all.
MENO: How do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I mean that good men are necessarily useful or profitable. Were
we not right in admitting this? It must be so.
MENO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And in supposing that they will be useful only if they are true
guides to us of action--there we were also right?
MENO: Yes.
SOCRATES: But when we said that a man cannot be a good guide unless he
have knowledge (phrhonesis), this we were wrong.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: where the lady was? In fact, he ruined a very nice thoroughbred that I
had just given him. Forgive my chatter, mademoiselle; I have but just
come home from Germany. For a year I have heard no decent French, I
have been weaned from French faces, and satiated with Germans, to such
a degree that, I believe, in my patriotic mania, I could talk to the
chimeras on a French candlestick. And if I talk with a lack of reserve
unbecoming in a diplomatist, the fault is yours, mademoiselle. Was it
not you who pointed out my brother? When he is the theme I become
inexhaustible. I should like to proclaim to all the world how good and
generous he is. He gave up no less than a hundred thousand francs a
year, the income from the Longueville property."
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