| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: standing up and holding on to the coachman's belt. To my great
surprise, the chaise turned into our road and flew by me in at
the gate. While I was puzzling why the police inspector had come
to see us, I heard a noise, and a carriage with three horses came
into sight on the road. In the carriage stood the police captain,
directing his coachman towards our gate.
"And why is he coming?" I thought, looking at the dusty police
captain. "Most probably Pobyedimsky has complained of Fyodor to
him, and they have come to take him to prison."
But the mystery was not so easily solved. The police inspector
and the police captain were only the first instalment, for five
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: whole earth was sending forth and creating diverse animals, tame and wild,
she our mother was free and pure from savage monsters, and out of all
animals selected and brought forth man, who is superior to the rest in
understanding, and alone has justice and religion. And a great proof that
she brought forth the common ancestors of us and of the departed, is that
she provided the means of support for her offspring. For as a woman proves
her motherhood by giving milk to her young ones (and she who has no
fountain of milk is not a mother), so did this our land prove that she was
the mother of men, for in those days she alone and first of all brought
forth wheat and barley for human food, which is the best and noblest
sustenance for man, whom she regarded as her true offspring. And these are
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: persons declared that it would be a fine thing to re-establish, for
distinguished persons, the funeral pyre. This opinion had its
defenders and its detractors. Some said that there were too many such
personages, and the price of wood would be enormously increased by
such a custom; moreover, it would be absurd to see our ancestors in
their urns in the procession at Longchamps. And if the urns were
valuable, they were likely some day to be sold at auction, full of
respectable ashes, or seized by creditors,--a race of men who
respected nothing. The other side made answer that our ancestors were
much safer in urns than at Pere-Lachaise, for before very long the
city of Paris would be compelled to order a Saint-Bartholomew against
Ferragus |
