| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: at length take some root in the city, those of Zeno and Epicurus
were used merely as the rule for the ordering of life, while the
dogmatic scepticism of Carneades, by its very principles,
annihilated the possibility of argument and encouraged a perfect
indifference to research.
Nor were the Romans ever fortunate enough like the Greeks to have
to face the incubus of any dogmatic system of legends and myths,
the immoralities and absurdities of which might excite a
revolutionary outbreak of sceptical criticism. For the Roman
religion became as it were crystallised and isolated from progress
at an early period of its evolution. Their gods remained mere
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: tarnished under glass shades, the small gilt-framed mirror over the
chimney-piece, and in the grate a charred stick or two of firewood
which had lasted them for two winters, as my head-clerk put it. As for
the office, you can guess what it was like--more letter-files than
business letters, a set of common pigeon-holes for either partner, a
cylinder desk, empty as the cash-box, in the middle of the room, and a
couple of armchairs on either side of a coal fire. The carpet on the
floor was bought cheap at second-hand (like the bills and bad debts).
In short, it was the mahogany furniture of furnished apartments which
usually descends from one occupant of chambers to another during fifty
years of service. Now you know the pair of antagonists.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: audirent, statuisset Atuatucos esse conservandos, ne se armis despoliaret.
Sibi omnes fere finitimos esse inimicos ac suae virtuti invidere; a
quibus se defelldere traditis armis non possent. Sibi praestare, si in
eum casum deducerentur, quamvis fortunam a populo Romano pati quam ab his
per cruciatum interfici inter quos dominari consuessent.
Ad haec Caesar respondit: se magis consuetudine sua quam merito eorum
civitatem conservaturum, si prius quam murum aries attigisset se
dedidissent; sed deditionis nullam esse condicionem nisi armis traditis.
Se id quod in Nerviis fecisset facturum finitimisque imperaturum ne quam
dediticiis populi Romani iniuriam inferrent. Re renuntiata ad suos illi
se quae imperarentur facere dixerunt. Armorum magna multitudine de muro
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