| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by the
ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De virtute, Demodocus,
Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and external
evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there still
remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they
are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, or possibly
like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions
of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some contemporary
transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some
Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not
that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: I can shoot your heart and kill it!
I can blow you strong, my brother,
I can heal you, Hiawatha !"
"Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus,
"Wayhaway!" the mystic chorus.
"I myself, myself! the prophet!
When I speak the wigwam trembles,
Shakes the Sacred Lodge with terror,
Hands unseen begin to shake it!
When I walk, the sky I tread on
Bends and makes a noise beneath me!
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: of books lying everywhere. Their number and quality made
the meagre furniture that supported them seem absurdly
disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must have been
recently purchased; and though he encouraged her to buy in
reason, he had no notion that she indulged her innate
passion so extensively in proportion to the narrowness of
their income. For the first time he felt a little hurt by
what he thought her extravagance, and resolved to say a word
to her about it. But, before he had found the courage to
speak an event happened which set his thoughts flying in
quite another direction.
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
