| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: wrought terrible havoc in that sanguine, uncontaminated nature. The
grave man, the chamberlain who was wont to tread the state
apartments at the Tuileries with slow and dignified step, was now
nightly driven to plunge his teeth into his bolster, while with sobs
of exasperation he pictured to himself a sensual shape which never
changed. But this time he was determined to make an end of the
torture. Coming along the highroad in the deep quiet of the
gloaming, he had meditated a fierce course of action. And the
moment he had finished his opening remarks he tried to take hold of
Nana with both hands.
"No, no! Take care!" she said simply. She was not vexed; nay, she
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the
life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last.
But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof:
calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady
unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed
gradations, and at the last one pause:--through infancy's unconscious
spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common
doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's
pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round
again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies
the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails
Moby Dick |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: beautiful,' are not really classes at all, but are merged in one great
class of the infinite or negative. The conception of Plato, in the days
before logic, seems to be more correct than this. For the word 'not' does
not altogether annihilate the positive meaning of the word 'just': at
least, it does not prevent our looking for the 'not-just' in or about the
same class in which we might expect to find the 'just.' 'Not-just is not-
honourable' is neither a false nor an unmeaning proposition. The reason is
that the negative proposition has really passed into an undefined positive.
To say that 'not-just' has no more meaning than 'not-honourable'--that is
to say, that the two cannot in any degree be distinguished, is clearly
repugnant to the common use of language.
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