| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: again beholding what the poet has called:
"The kind companion of terrestrial night;"
and he pointed to a disc that was rising at a spot precisely
opposite the place where they would have expected to see the sun.
"The moon!" again he cried.
But Captain Servadac could not altogether enter into his
servant's enthusiasm. If this were actually the moon, her distance
from the earth must have been increased by some millions of miles.
He was rather disposed to suspect that it was not the earth's
satellite at all, but some planet with its apparent magnitude
greatly enlarged by its approximation to the earth. Taking up
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: HIPPIAS: I mean to say that they have the power.
SOCRATES: In a word, then, the false are they who are wise and have the
power to speak falsely?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then a man who has not the power of speaking falsely and is
ignorant cannot be false?
HIPPIAS: You are right.
SOCRATES: And every man has power who does that which he wishes at the
time when he wishes. I am not speaking of any special case in which he is
prevented by disease or something of that sort, but I am speaking
generally, as I might say of you, that you are able to write my name when
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: younger sisters and brothers.
From this bare outline, it may be imagined that the Topinards, to use
the hackneyed formula, were "poor but honest." Topinard himself was
verging on forty; Mme. Topinard, once leader of a chorus--mistress,
too, it was said, of Gaudissart's predecessor, was certainly thirty
years old. Lolotte had been a fine woman in her day; but the
misfortunes of the previous management had told upon her to such an
extent, that it had seemed to her to be both advisable and necessary
to contract a stage-marriage with Topinard. She did not doubt but
that, as soon as they could muster the sum of a hundred and fifty
francs, her Topinard would perform his vows agreeably to the civil
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