| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: face, so cruelly beautiful, and as pale as a ghost. She is my evil
genius.--Madame de Lansac," she added, after a flash and gesture of
annoyance, "who only goes to a ball to watch everything while
pretending to sleep, has made me miserably anxious. Martial shall pay
dearly for playing me such a trick. Urge him, meanwhile, since he is
your friend, not to make me so unhappy."
"I have just been with a man who promises to blow his brains out, and
nothing less, if he speaks to that little lady. And he is a man,
madame, to keep his word. But then I know Martial; such threats are to
him an encouragement. And, besides, we have wagered----" Here the
Colonel lowered his voice.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: other, but a new beginning, partly artificial, partly arising out of the
questionings of the mind itself, and also receiving a stimulus from the
study of ancient writings.
Considering the great and fundamental differences which exist in ancient
and modern philosophy, it seems best that we should at first study them
separately, and seek for the interpretation of either, especially of the
ancient, from itself only, comparing the same author with himself and with
his contemporaries, and with the general state of thought and feeling
prevalent in his age. Afterwards comes the remoter light which they cast
on one another. We begin to feel that the ancients had the same thoughts
as ourselves, the same difficulties which characterize all periods of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: And the strawberry, Odahmin,
And the gooseberry, Shahbomin,
And the grape.vine, the Bemahgut,
Trailing o'er the alder-branches,
Filling all the air with fragrance!
"Master of Life!" he cried, desponding,
"Must our lives depend on these things?"
On the third day of his fasting
By the lake he sat and pondered,
By the still, transparent water;
Saw the sturgeon, Nahma, leaping,
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