| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: there is no chance of your being so; and indeed I hope it is not
likely that you should be deliberately unkind to any creature; but
unless you are deliberately kind to every creature, you will often
be cruel to many. Cruel, partly through want of imagination, (a far
rarer and weaker faculty in women than men,) and yet more, at the
present day, through the subtle encouragement of your selfishness by
the religious doctrine that all which we now suppose to be evil will
be brought to a good end; doctrine practically issuing, not in less
earnest efforts that the immediate unpleasantness may be averted
from ourselves, but in our remaining satisfied in the contemplation
of its ultimate objects, when it is inflicted on others.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: short, the chevalier had the privilege of superlatives. His
compliments, of which he was stingy, won the good graces of all the
old women; he made himself agreeable to every one, even to the
officials of the government, from whom he wanted nothing. His behavior
at cards had a lofty distinction which everybody noticed: he never
complained; he praised his adversaries when they lost; he did not
rebuke or teach his partners by showing them how they ought to have
played. When, in the course of a deal, those sickening dissertations
on the game would take place, the chevalier invariably drew out his
snuff-box with a gesture that was worthy of Mole, looked at the
Princess Goritza, raised the cover with dignity, shook, sifted, massed
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: fairest of all possible mixtures.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Tell me first;--should we be most likely to succeed if we
mingled every sort of pleasure with every sort of wisdom?
PROTARCHUS: Perhaps we might.
SOCRATES: But I should be afraid of the risk, and I think that I can show
a safer plan.
PROTARCHUS: What is it?
SOCRATES: One pleasure was supposed by us to be truer than another, and
one art to be more exact than another.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
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