| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: Four days of such a discipline had cured the family of Paris; the
same year Fleeming was to write, in answer apparently to a question
of Frank Scott's, 'I could find no national game in France but
revolutions'; and the witticism was justified in their experience.
On the first possible day, they applied for passports, and were
advised to take the road to Geneva. It appears it was scarce safe
to leave Paris for England. Charles Reade, with keen dramatic
gusto, had just smuggled himself out of that city in the bottom of
a cab. English gold had been found on the insurgents, the name of
England was in evil odour; and it was thus - for strategic reasons,
so to speak - that Fleeming found himself on the way to that Italy
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: is the same and many men are speaking, will not he who knows the good know
the bad speaker also? For if he does not know the bad, neither will he
know the good when the same topic is being discussed.
ION: True.
SOCRATES: Is not the same person skilful in both?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you say that Homer and the other poets, such as Hesiod and
Archilochus, speak of the same things, although not in the same way; but
the one speaks well and the other not so well?
ION: Yes; and I am right in saying so.
SOCRATES: And if you knew the good speaker, you would also know the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: of time till our own day, have cherished as a precious treasure
certain strains which epitomize their instincts and habits; I might
almost say their history. Listen to one of these primitive tones,--the
Gregorian chant, for instance, is, in sacred song, the inheritance of
the earliest peoples,--and you will lose yourself in deep dreaming.
Strange and immense conceptions will unfold within you, in spite of
the extreme simplicity of these rudimentary relics. And once or twice
in a century--not oftener, there arises a Homer of music, to whom God
grants the gift of being ahead of his age; men who can compact
melodies full of accomplished facts, pregnant with mighty poetry.
Think of this; remember it. The thought, repeated by you, will prove
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