| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: 'The power and faculty of loving the truth, and of doing all things for the
sake of the truth': or, again, the singular acknowledgment which may be
regarded as the anticipation of a new logic, that 'In going to war for mind
I must have weapons of a different make from those which I used before,
although some of the old ones may do again.' Let us pause awhile to
reflect on a sentence which is full of meaning to reformers of religion or
to the original thinker of all ages: 'Shall we then agree with them of old
time, and merely reassert the notions of others without risk to ourselves;
or shall we venture also to share in the risk and bear the reproach which
will await us': i.e. if we assert mind to be the author of nature. Let us
note the remarkable words, 'That in the divine nature of Zeus there is the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: to the archives of the age.--To-day Lousteau flatters me, to-morrow he
may ask for my head.--Excuse me, I forgot you were a judge.
"I have gone through a passion for a lady, a great lady, as far
superior to Madame de la Baudraye as your fine feeling, monsieur, is
superior to Lousteau's vulgar retaliation; but I would have died
rather than utter her name. A few months of her airs and graces cost
me a hundred thousand francs and my prospects for life; but I do not
think the price too high!--And I have never murmured!--If a woman
betrays the secret of her passion, it is the supreme offering of her
love, but a man!--He must be a Lousteau!
"No, I would not give up that paper for a thousand crowns."
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: standard as high as that which she had set herself. An all-round
sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her
opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly
stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to
keep footmen clearly intended her to maintain an equally
specialized staff of responsibilities. It was the more to be
regretted that Mrs. Ballinger, whose obligations to society were
bounded by the narrow scope of two parlour-maids, should have
been so tenacious of the right to entertain Osric Dane.
The question of that lady's reception had for a month past
profoundly moved the members of the Lunch Club. It was not that
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