| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: well as the parts, and of the mind as well as the body, which is playfully
intimated in the story of the Thracian; (3) The tendency of the age to
verbal distinctions, which here, as in the Protagoras and Cratylus, are
ascribed to the ingenuity of Prodicus; and to interpretations or rather
parodies of Homer or Hesiod, which are eminently characteristic of Plato
and his contemporaries; (4) The germ of an ethical principle contained in
the notion that temperance is 'doing one's own business,' which in the
Republic (such is the shifting character of the Platonic philosophy) is
given as the definition, not of temperance, but of justice; (5) The
impatience which is exhibited by Socrates of any definition of temperance
in which an element of science or knowledge is not included; (6) The
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: of blood to the head. She confided her ills to the Chevalier de
Valois, enumerating her foot-baths, and consulting him as to
refrigerants. On such occasions the shrewd old gentleman would pull
out his snuff-box, gaze at the Princess Goritza, and say, by way of
conclusion:--
"The right composing draught, my dear lady, is a good and kind
husband."
"But whom can one trust?" she replied.
The chevalier would then brush away the snuff which had settled in the
folds of his waistcoat or his paduasoy breeches. To the world at large
this gesture would have seemed very natural; but it always gave
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: town, were seen, amongst many venerable oaks and tangled
thickets, the turrets of a castle as old as the walls of York and
Lancaster, but which seemed to have received important
alterations during the age of Elizabeth and her successor, It had
not been a place of great size; but whatever accommodation it
formerly afforded was, it must be supposed, still to be obtained
within its walls. At least, such was the inference which General
Browne drew from observing the smoke arise merrily from several
of the ancient wreathed and carved chimney-stalks. The wall of
the park ran alongside of the highway for two or three hundred
yards; and through the different points by which the eye found
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