| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: improvement of the bodily condition and the salvation of states and power
over others and wealth?'--they would agree to the latter alternative, if I
am not mistaken?
He assented.
'Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in
pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other
standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?'--they would
acknowledge that they were not?
I think so, said Protagoras.
'And do you not pursue after pleasure as a good, and avoid pain as an
evil?'
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: violent and agitated Hercules represented in the over-excited energy
of his labors.
PART II
THE PARVENUS
CHAPTER I
PHELLION, UNDER A NEW ASPECT
Between the first and second parts of this history an immense event
had taken place in the life of Phellion.
There is no one who has not heard of the misfortunes of the Odeon,
that fatal theatre which, for years, ruined all its directors. Right
or wrong, the quarter in which this dramatic impossibility stands is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: with a loyal and ardent spirit of partisanship. The better you
come to understand France the more clearly you see that even to-
day no study of the Revolution strikes any Frenchman as
having been impartial.''
This observation is perfectly correct. To be interpretable with
equity, the events of the past must no longer be productive of
results and must not touch the religious or political beliefs
whose inevitable intolerance I have denoted.
We must not therefore be surprised that historians express very
different ideas respecting the Revolution. For a long time to
come some will still see in it one of the most sinister events of
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