| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: Genevieve coming half-naked from the ground-floor room in which she
slept.
"Adieu, adieu! all is over, adieu!" she cried, weeping hot tears.
"Genevieve, what troubles you?" asked the doctor.
Genevieve shook her head with a motion of despair, raised her arm to
heaven, looked at the carriage, uttering a long-drawn moan with every
sign of the utmost terror; then she returned to her room silently.
"That is a good omen!" cried the colonel. "She feels she is to lose
her companion. Perhaps she SEES that Stephanie will recover her
reason."
"God grant it!" said Monsieur Fanjat, who himself was affected by the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: get away without our catching her, she got the cartridges for him!" Peter
paused impressively between the words. "And now she's gone back to him.
It's for him she's taken that ammunition!"
Peter looked across the fire at the stranger, to see what impression his
story was making.
"I tell you what," said Peter, "if I'd had any idea that day who that
bloody nigger was, the day I saw him standing at my door, I'd have given
him one cartridge in the back of his head more than ever he reckoned for!"
Peter looked triumphantly at the stranger. This was his only story; and he
had told it a score of times round the camp fire for the benefit of some
new-comer. When this point was reached, a low murmur of applause and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: vision of metaphysical philosophy; and such a science when brought nearer
to us in the Philebus and the Republic will not be called by the name of
(Greek). Hence we see with surprise that Plato, who in his other writings
identifies good and knowledge, here opposes them, and asks, almost in the
spirit of Aristotle, how can there be a knowledge of knowledge, and even if
attainable, how can such a knowledge be of any use?
The difficulty of the Charmides arises chiefly from the two senses of the
word (Greek), or temperance. From the ethical notion of temperance, which
is variously defined to be quietness, modesty, doing our own business, the
doing of good actions, the dialogue passes onto the intellectual conception
of (Greek), which is declared also to be the science of self-knowledge, or
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