| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: it was otherwise. So instead of conservatively investing her surplus, she
makes ducks and drakes of it in her son's office. Is he at Hyde Park
now?' Hyde Park was where the old Beverly country seat had always been."
"'No,' I answered. 'He went to Europe early last month.'"
"'Very likely he took her with him. She is probably at Monte Carlo.'"
"'Scarcely in August, I fancy. And I'll tell you what, Ethel. I have been
counting it up. She has lost twenty-four thousand dollars in the Standard
Egg alone. It takes a good deal of surplus to stand that.'"
"'Serve her right,' said Ethel 'And I would say so to her face.'"
"September brought freshness to the stock market but not to me. Mr.
Beverly, like the well-to-do man that he was, remained away in Europe
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: Mina," insisted the girl.
"I am not a colonel," replied Georges.
"But isn't your name Georges?"
"What's all this?" said the steward, intervening.
"Monsieur, my name is Georges Marest; I am the son of a rich wholesale
ironmonger in the rue Saint-Martin; I come on business to Monsieur le
Comte de Serizy from Maitre Crottat, a notary, whose second clerk I
am."
"And I," said the girl, "am telling him that monseigneur said to me:
'There'll come a colonel named Czerni-Georges, aide-de-camp to Mina;
he'll come by Pierrotin's coach; if he asks for me show him into the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: figures, laws, habits, studies, must they not be defined with reference to
pleasure and utility? Polus assents to this latter doctrine, and is easily
persuaded that the fouler of two things must exceed either in pain or in
hurt. But the doing cannot exceed the suffering of evil in pain, and
therefore must exceed in hurt. Thus doing is proved by the testimony of
Polus himself to be worse or more hurtful than suffering.
There remains the other question: Is a guilty man better off when he is
punished or when he is unpunished? Socrates replies, that what is done
justly is suffered justly: if the act is just, the effect is just; if to
punish is just, to be punished is just, and therefore fair, and therefore
beneficent; and the benefit is that the soul is improved. There are three
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