| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: Tuscan strain in them still, and he recognized it.
"Today, when Charles Edward de la Palferine's name is mentioned, not
three persons in a hundred know the history of his house. But the
Bourbons have actually left a Foix-Grailly to live by his easel.
"Ah, if you but knew how brilliantly Charles Edward accepts his
obscure position! how he scoffs at the bourgeois of 1830! What Attic
salt in his wit! He would be the king of Bohemia, if Bohemia would
endure a king. His /verve/ is inexhaustible. To him we owe a map of
the country and the names of the seven castles which Nodier could not
discover."
"The one thing wanting in one of the cleverest skits of our time,"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: importance to-day, as yesterday, is still our son. I am extremely
fond of him, as you know, and odd though it may seem to you, I
admired his conduct last night immensely. He took up the cudgels
for that pretty prude with wonderful promptitude. He is just what
I should have liked a son of mine to be. Except that no son of
mine should ever take the side of the Puritans: that is always an
error. Now, what I propose is this.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Lord Illingworth, no proposition of yours
interests me.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. According to our ridiculous English laws, I
can't legitimise Gerald. But I can leave him my property.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: and of reaction. In politics we require order as well as liberty, and have
to consider the proportions in which under given circumstances they may be
safely combined. In religion there is a tendency to lose sight of
morality, to separate goodness from the love of truth, to worship God
without attempting to know him. In philosophy again there are two opposite
principles, of immediate experience and of those general or a priori truths
which are supposed to transcend experience. But the common sense or common
opinion of mankind is incapable of apprehending these opposite sides or
views--men are determined by their natural bent to one or other of them;
they go straight on for a time in a single line, and may be many things by
turns but not at once.
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