| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: ancient from the modern mode of conceiving God.
a. To Plato, the idea of God or mind is both personal and impersonal. Nor
in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to him, and in
speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter gender, did he seem to
himself inconsistent. For the difference between the personal and
impersonal was not marked to him as to ourselves. We make a fundamental
distinction between a thing and a person, while to Plato, by the help of
various intermediate abstractions, such as end, good, cause, they appear
almost to meet in one, or to be two aspects of the same. Hence, without
any reconciliation or even remark, in the Republic he speaks at one time of
God or Gods, and at another time of the Good. So in the Phaedrus he seems
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: roaming. I walked to the extremity of the ledge
and gazed down. My head nearly swam. At the
foot of the precipice all seemed dark and cold as
in a tomb; the moss-grown jags of the rocks,
hurled down by storm and time, were awaiting
their prey.
The ledge on which we were to fight formed
an almost regular triangle. Six paces were mea-
sured from the projecting corner, and it was de-
cided that whichever had first to meet the fire of
his opponent should stand in the very corner with
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: "Ah ca! Joseph; I shall soon have to send you away, my lad."
"What is it, monsieur?"
"You do nothing but make mistakes. Where did you carry those letters I
gave you Saturday?"
Joseph became stolid. Like a statue in some cathedral porch, he stood
motionless, entirely absorbed in the labors of imagination. Suddenly
he smiled idiotically, and said:--
"Monsieur, one was for the Marquise de Listomere, the other was for
Monsieur's lawyer."
"You are certain of what you say?"
Joseph was speechless. I saw plainly that I must interfere, as I
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