| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: must I include music, which is admitted to be guess-work? 'Yes, you must,
if human life is to have any humanity.' Well, then, I will open the door
and let them all in; they shall mingle in an Homeric 'meeting of the
waters.' And now we turn to the pleasures; shall I admit them? 'Admit
first of all the pure pleasures; secondly, the necessary.' And what shall
we say about the rest? First, ask the pleasures--they will be too happy to
dwell with wisdom. Secondly, ask the arts and sciences--they reply that
the excesses of intemperance are the ruin of them; and that they would
rather only have the pleasures of health and temperance, which are the
handmaidens of virtue. But still we want truth? That is now added; and so
the argument is complete, and may be compared to an incorporeal law, which
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: Law of Electric Conduction.' He found that, though the current
passed through water, it did not pass through ice:--why not, since
they are one and the same substance? Some years subsequently he
answered this question by saying that the liquid condition enables
the molecule of water to turn round so as to place itself in the
proper line of polarization, while the rigidity of the solid
condition prevents this arrangement. This polar arrangement must
precede decomposition, and decomposition is an accompaniment of
conduction. He then passed on to other substances; to oxides and
chlorides, and iodides, and salts, and sulphurets, and found them
all insulators when solid, and conductors when fused. In all cases,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: tarnished my past joys. Since then I have felt myself humiliated
in you,--you whom I thought the most honorable of men, as you are
the most loving, the most tender. I must indeed have deep
confidence in your heart, so young and pure, to make you this
avowal which costs me much. Ah! my dear love, how is it that you,
knowing your father had unjustly deprived others of their
property, that YOU can keep it?
"'And you told me of this criminal act in a room filled with the
mute witnesses of our love; and you are a gentleman, and you think
yourself noble, and I am yours! I try to find excuses for you; I
do find them in your youth and thoughtlessness. I know there is
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