| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: cannot pass away, is his who has not known, but yet has believed. A very
few among the sons of men have made themselves independent of
circumstances, past, present, or to come. He who has attained to such a
temper of mind has already present with him eternal life; he needs no
arguments to convince him of immortality; he has in him already a principle
stronger than death. He who serves man without the thought of reward is
deemed to be a more faithful servant than he who works for hire. May not
the service of God, which is the more disinterested, be in like manner the
higher? And although only a very few in the course of the world's history
--Christ himself being one of them--have attained to such a noble
conception of God and of the human soul, yet the ideal of them may be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: save something about Mrs. Erme's having got on her feet again in
the most extraordinary way - a remark pointing, as I supposed, the
moral that private understandings were of little use when the
doctor didn't share them. What I took the liberty of more closely
inferring was that the girl might in some way have estranged him.
Well, if he had taken the turn of jealousy for instance it could
scarcely be jealousy of me. In that case - over and above the
absurdity of it - he wouldn't have gone away just to leave us
together. For some time before his going we had indulged in no
allusion to the buried treasure, and from his silence, which my
reserve simply emulated, I had drawn a sharp conclusion. His
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: duties and sacrifices-if I were only free from them all, and
could only forget them all, then I could live my life as I
pleased, and be happy."
"Why not?" said a quiet voice at his back.
He turned, and saw an old man with a long beard and a
threadbare cloak (the garb affected by the pagan philosophers)
standing behind him and smiling curiously.
"How is it that you answer that which has not been
spoken?" said Hermas; "and who are you that honour me with
your company?"
"Forgive the intrusion," answered the stranger; "it is not
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