The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: at all that could bring M. de Nueil to her house, she saw no objection
to his visit--after some prudent inquiries as to his family and
condition. At the same time, she began by a refusal. Then she
discussed the propriety of the matter with M. de Champignelles,
directing her questions so as to discover, if possible, whether he
knew the motives for the visit, and finally revoked her negative
answer. The discussion and the discretion shown perforce by the
Marquis had piqued her curiosity.
M. de Champignelles had no mind to cut a ridiculous figure. He said,
with the air of a man who can keep another's counsel, that the
Vicomtesse must know the purpose of this visit perfectly well; while
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more
than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood
outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could
see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the
valley. I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace,
because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly
commonplace people--and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take
it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it,
any fine autumn morning.
The manner of my lighting on it was this.
I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: such perceptions to the body. Perhaps, however, I had better allow you to
answer for yourself and not interfere. Tell me, then, are not the organs
through which you perceive warm and hard and light and sweet, organs of the
body?
THEAETETUS: Of the body, certainly.
SOCRATES: And you would admit that what you perceive through one faculty
you cannot perceive through another; the objects of hearing, for example,
cannot be perceived through sight, or the objects of sight through hearing?
THEAETETUS: Of course not.
SOCRATES: If you have any thought about both of them, this common
perception cannot come to you, either through the one or the other organ?
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