| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: the flame of their looks. But, above all, they had the modesty of
pride, a chaste reserve, a TOUCH-ME-NOT which at a maturer age might
have seemed intentional coyness, so much did their demeanor inspire a
wish to know them. The elder, Comte Clement de Negrepelisse, was close
upon his sixteenth year. For the last two years he had ceased to wear
the pretty English round jacket which his brother, Vicomte Camille
d'Espard, still wore. The Count, who for the last six months went no
more to the College Henri IV., was dressed in the style of a young man
enjoying the first pleasures of fashion. His father had not wished to
condemn him to a year's useless study of philosophy; he was trying to
give his knowledge some consistency by the study of transcendental
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: clothes--you remember my disguise--and catch the express. And,
after all, she was dead when I arrived."
"I know that," said Agatha uneasily. "Please say no more about
it."
"Not if it distresses you. Just let me hope that you did not
suppose I blamed you for your share in the matter or that I told
the Janseniuses of it. I did not. Yes, I like orchids. A plant
that can subsist on a scrap of board is an instance of natural
econ--"
"YOU blame ME!" cried Agatha. "_I_ never told the Janseniuses.
What would they have thought of you if I had?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: Like the supreme nature in the Timaeus, like the ideal beauty in the
Symposium or the Phaedrus, or like the ideal good in the Republic, this is
the absolute and unapproachable being. But this being is manifested in
symmetry and beauty everywhere, in the order of nature and of mind, in the
relations of men to one another. For the word 'measure' he now substitutes
the word 'symmetry,' as if intending to express measure conceived as
relation. He then proceeds to regard the good no longer in an objective
form, but as the human reason seeking to attain truth by the aid of
dialectic; such at least we naturally infer to be his meaning, when we
consider that both here and in the Republic the sphere of nous or mind is
assigned to dialectic. (2) It is remarkable (see above) that this personal
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