| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: man, a bigot of an unbeliever, and renders those it grasps indifferent
to all things, even to vital sentiments, to honor, to love--for the
doubt it brings takes from us the knowledge of ourselves and disgusts
us with life itself. Poor, nervous creatures, whom the very richness
of your organization delivers over to this mysterious, fatal power,
who are your peers and who your judges? Horrified by the thoughts that
rose within me, and demanding, like the wicked man, "Where is now thy
God?" I could not restrain the tears that rolled down my cheeks.
"What is it, dear Felix?" said Madeleine in her childish voice.
Then Henriette put to flight these dark horrors of the mind by a look
of tender solicitude which shone into my soul like a sunbeam. Just
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: how are we to find twelve thousand francs? I might offer myself
as a substitute in the army----"
"Oh! father dear!" they both cried, flinging their arms about
him. "No, no!"
"God reward you for the thought. We are not worth it, are we,
Nasie?" asked Delphine.
"And besides, father dear, it would only be a drop in the
bucket," observed the Countess.
"But is flesh and blood worth nothing?" cried the old man in his
despair. "I would give body and soul to save you, Nasie. I would
do a murder for the man who would rescue you. I would do, as
Father Goriot |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: magnitudes, numbers, and the like?
Very true.
But in the case of hearing and sight, or in the power of self-motion, and
the power of heat to burn, this relation to self will be regarded as
incredible by some, but perhaps not by others. And some great man, my
friend, is wanted, who will satisfactorily determine for us, whether there
is nothing which has an inherent property of relation to self, or some
things only and not others; and whether in this class of self-related
things, if there be such a class, that science which is called wisdom or
temperance is included. I altogether distrust my own power of determining
these matters: I am not certain whether there is such a science of science
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