| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: of cards to him. They sat down opposite each other for a long
time and played the simple game called brisque; then they had
supper and went to bed.
The following days were like the first, bright and cold, without
any more snow. Old Gaspard spent his afternoons in watching the
eagles and other rare birds which ventured on to those frozen
heights; while Ulrich journeyed regularly to the neck of the
Gemmi to look at the village. In the evening they played at
cards, dice, or dominoes, and lost and won trifling sums, just to
create an interest in the game.
One morning Hari, who was up first, called his companion. A
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: numbers, and is due to their abstract nature;--although we admit of course
what Plato seems to feel in his distinctions between pure and impure
knowledge, that the imperfection of matter enters into the applications of
them.
Above the other sciences, as in the Republic, towers dialectic, which is
the science of eternal Being, apprehended by the purest mind and reason.
The lower sciences, including the mathematical, are akin to opinion rather
than to reason, and are placed together in the fourth class of goods. The
relation in which they stand to dialectic is obscure in the Republic, and
is not cleared up in the Philebus.
V. Thus far we have only attained to the vestibule or ante-chamber of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: the utmost scorn and contempt; but rather wonder, when I observe
gentlemen in the country, rich enough to serve the nation in
parliament, poring in Partridge's almanack, to find out the
events of the year at home and abroad; not daring to propose a
hunting-match, till Gadbury or he have fixed the weather.
I will allow either of the two I have mentioned, or any other of
the fraternity, to be not only astrologers, but conjurers too, if
I do not produce a hundred instances in all their almanacks, to
convince any reasonable man, that they do not so much as
understand common grammar and syntax; that they are not able to
spell any word out of the usual road, nor even in their prefaces
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