| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: intonation; trembling glances which veil an inward daring; sudden
desires to speak and act that are paralyzed by their own violence; the
secret eloquence of common phrases spoken in a quivering voice; the
mysterious workings of that pristine modesty of soul and that divine
discernment which lead to hidden generosities, and give so exquisite a
flavor to silent devotion; in short, all the loveliness of young love,
and the weaknesses of its power.
Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of
soul. The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to
win as the handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the
eye roused her pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: Father Sergius was officiating at the Vigil Service in his
hermitage church, where the congregation was as large as the
little church could hold--about twenty people. They were all
well-to-do proprietors or merchants. Father Sergius admitted
anyone, but a selection was made by the monk in attendance and by
an assistant who was sent to the hermitage every day from the
monastery. A crowd of some eighty people--pilgrims and peasants,
and especially peasant-women--stood outside waiting for Father
Sergius to come out and bless them. Meanwhile he conducted the
service, but at the point at which he went out to the tomb of his
predecessor, he staggered and would have fallen had he not been
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: subdivision is the art of man-herding,--this has to do with bipeds, and is
what we were seeking after, and have now found, being at once the royal and
political.
YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.
STRANGER: And do you think, Socrates, that we really have done as you say?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
STRANGER: Do you think, I mean, that we have really fulfilled our
intention?--There has been a sort of discussion, and yet the investigation
seems to me not to be perfectly worked out: this is where the enquiry
fails.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand.
Statesman |
