| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: 'I am, in spite of what you would say, a poor miserable outcast,
fitter to have been smothered in the cradle than to have been
brought up to scare the world in which I crawl.' The person whom
he addressed in vain endeavoured to impress him with the
indifference to external form which is the natural result of
philosophy, or entreat him to recall the superiority of mental
talents to the more attractive attributes that are merely
personal. 'I hear you,' he would reply; 'but you speak the voice
of cold-blooded stoicism, or, at least, of friendly partiality.
But look at every book which we have read, those excepted of that
abstract philosophy which feels no responsive voice in our
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: hand-labour. Whether the division between those two classes is
increasing or not, is a very serious question. Continued
legislation in favour of the hand-labourer, and a beneficence
towards him, when in need, such as no other nation on earth has ever
shown, have done much to abolish the moral division. But the social
division has surely been increased during the last half century, by
the inevitable tendency, both in commerce and agriculture, to employ
one large capital, where several small ones would have been employed
a century ago. The large manufactory, the large shop, the large
estate, the large farm, swallows up the small ones. The yeoman, the
thrifty squatter who could work at two or three trades as well as
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: Asia, as far as Egypt; and after him came his son, who ruled all the
accessible part of Egypt and Libya; the third king was Darius, who extended
the land boundaries of the empire to Scythia, and with his fleet held the
sea and the islands. None presumed to be his equal; the minds of all men
were enthralled by him--so many and mighty and warlike nations had the
power of Persia subdued. Now Darius had a quarrel against us and the
Eretrians, because, as he said, we had conspired against Sardis, and he
sent 500,000 men in transports and vessels of war, and 300 ships, and Datis
as commander, telling him to bring the Eretrians and Athenians to the king,
if he wished to keep his head on his shoulders. He sailed against the
Eretrians, who were reputed to be amongst the noblest and most warlike of
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