| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: occurring in the Statesman, in which the life of innocence is contrasted
with the ordinary life of man and the consciousness of evil: (2) the
legend of the Island of Atlantis, an imaginary history, which is a fragment
only, commenced in the Timaeus and continued in the Critias: (3) the much
less artistic fiction of the foundation of the Cretan colony which is
introduced in the preface to the Laws, but soon falls into the background:
(4) the beautiful but rather artificial tale of Prometheus and Epimetheus
narrated in his rhetorical manner by Protagoras in the dialogue called
after him: (5) the speech at the beginning of the Phaedrus, which is a
parody of the orator Lysias; the rival speech of Socrates and the
recantation of it. To these may be added (6) the tale of the grasshoppers,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: directly to mention the commerce and the navigation when I come to
towns upon the coast as what few writers have yet meddled with.
The reason of the dangers of this particular coast are found in the
situation of the county and in the course of ships sailing this
way, which I shall describe as well as I can thus:- The shore from
the mouth of the River of Thames to Yarmouth Roads lies in a
straight line from SSE. TO NNW., the land being on the W. or
larboard side.
From Wintertonness, which is the utmost northerly point of land in
the county of Norfolk, and about four miles beyond Yarmouth, the
shore falls off for nearly sixty miles to the west, as far as Lynn
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: gathering them. The mourning in her heart forbade her
assuming this simple ornament, though she had not yet had
time to put on the outward semblance of woe. She then turned
towards the avenue. As she advanced she fancied she heard a
voice speaking her name. She stopped astonished, then the
voice reached her ear more distinctly, and she recognized it
to be that of Maximilian.
Chapter 73
The Promise.
It was, indeed, Maximilian Morrel, who had passed a wretched
existence since the previous day. With the instinct peculiar
 The Count of Monte Cristo |