| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: go out.
"What is the matter?" he asked Madame Ragon.
"Nothing," she said; "it is only the tumbril cart and the executioner
going to the Place Louis XV. Ah! we used to see it often enough last
year; but to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first
of January, one does not feel sorry to see the ghastly procession."
"Why not?" asked the abbe. "That is not said like a Christian."
"Eh! but it is the execution of Robespierre's accomplices. They
defended themselves as long as they could, but now it is their turn to
go where they sent so many innocent people."
The crowd poured by like a flood. The abbe, yielding to an impulse of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: Tarleton's business is the story that you understand anything about
it. You never could explain any mortal thing about it to me when I
asked you. "See what was done the last time": that was the beginning
and the end of your wisdom. Youre nothing but a turnspit.
JOHNNY. A what!
BENTLEY. A turnspit. If your father hadnt made a roasting jack for
you to turn, youd be earning twenty-four shillings a week behind a
counter.
JOHNNY. If you dont take that back and apologize for your bad
manners, I'll give you as good a hiding as ever--
BENTLEY. Help! Johnny's beating me! Oh! Murder! _[He throws
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: the notion of their indefiniteness is characteristic of a sadly indefinite
and ignorant mind. He, however, who raises the question whether they are
to be truly regarded as one or five, takes up a more reasonable position.
Arguing from probabilities, I am of opinion that they are one; another,
regarding the question from another point of view, will be of another mind.
But, leaving this enquiry, let us proceed to distribute the elementary
forms, which have now been created in idea, among the four elements.
To earth, then, let us assign the cubical form; for earth is the most
immoveable of the four and the most plastic of all bodies, and that which
has the most stable bases must of necessity be of such a nature. Now, of
the triangles which we assumed at first, that which has two equal sides is
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