| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: have a future before you, in fact."
"Oh! sir."
"No; I tell you so. We may do business together. I will buy your
romance."
Lucien's heart swelled and throbbed with gladness. He was about to
enter the world of literature; he should see himself in print at last.
"I will give you four hundred francs," continued Doguereau in honeyed
accents, and he looked at Lucien with an air which seemed to betoken
an effort of generosity.
"The volume?" queried Lucien.
"For the romance," said Doguereau, heedless of Lucien's surprise. "In
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so
natural to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she had
been dreaming.
"My child," the mother cried, "why did you not tell me of this
before?"
"I forgot," said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her
breakfast.
Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.
But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling
examined them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she
was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in England.
Peter Pan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: believed in his own oracular sign, of which he seemed to have an internal
witness. But the existence of Apollo or Zeus, or the other gods whom the
State approves, would have appeared to him both uncertain and unimportant
in comparison of the duty of self-examination, and of those principles of
truth and right which he deemed to be the foundation of religion. (Compare
Phaedr.; Euthyph.; Republic.)
The second question, whether Plato meant to represent Socrates as braving
or irritating his judges, must also be answered in the negative. His
irony, his superiority, his audacity, 'regarding not the person of man,'
necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his situation. He is not acting a
part upon a great occasion, but he is what he has been all his life long,
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