| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: he was two weeks old, and kissed him, and cried over him; and then
I gave him laudanum, and held him close to my bosom, while he slept
to death. How I mourned and cried over it! and who ever dreamed
that it was anything but a mistake, that had made me give it the
laudanum? but it's one of the few things that I'm glad of, now.
I am not sorry, to this day; he, at least, is out of pain. What
better than death could I give him, poor child! After a while, the
cholera came, and Captain Stuart died; everybody died that wanted
to live,--and I,--I, though I went down to death's door,--_I lived!_
Then I was sold, and passed from hand to hand, till I grew faded
and wrinkled, and I had a fever; and then this wretch bought me,
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: and when he endeavored to find out why she had not brought Lili with
her:
"Oh no, no, never!" she said stiffly. "Not three months ago she
positively insisted on leaving her boarding school. I was thinking
of marrying her off at once, but she loves me so that I had to take
her home--oh, so much against my will!"
Her blue eyelids with their blackened lashes blinked and wavered
while she spoke of the business of settling her young lady. If at
her time of life she hadn't laid by a sou but was still always
working to minister to men's pleasures, especially those very young
men, whose grandmother she might well be, it was truly because she
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: pleasures are good and others bad?
SOCRATES: And yet you will acknowledge that they are different from one
another, and sometimes opposed?
PROTARCHUS: Not in so far as they are pleasures.
SOCRATES: That is a return to the old position, Protarchus, and so we are
to say (are we?) that there is no difference in pleasures, but that they
are all alike; and the examples which have just been cited do not pierce
our dull minds, but we go on arguing all the same, like the weakest and
most inexperienced reasoners? (Probably corrupt.)
PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: Why, I mean to say, that in self-defence I may, if I like,
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