| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: The conglomeration of families forms a village ruled by that
patriarchal sway which is the oldest form of government in the
world, as is shown by the fact that all men count it to be the
constitution of heaven, and the villages are merged into the state,
and here the progression stops.
For Aristotle, like all Greek thinkers, found his ideal within the
walls of the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], yet perhaps
in his remark that a united Greece would rule the world we may
discern some anticipation of that 'federal union of free states
into one consolidated empire' which, more than the [Greek text
which cannot be reproduced], is to our eyes the ultimately perfect
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: Lucien, seeing these petty trifles, hitherto unimagined, became aware
of a whole world of indispensable superfluities, and shuddered to
think of the enormous capital needed by a professional pretty fellow!
The more he admired these gay and careless beings, the more conscious
he grew of his own outlandishness; he knew that he looked like a man
who has no idea of the direction of the streets, who stands close to
the Palais Royal and cannot find it, and asks his way to the Louvre of
a passer-by, who tells him, "Here you are." Lucien saw a great gulf
fixed between him and this new world, and asked himself how he might
cross over, for he meant to be one of these delicate, slim youths of
Paris, these young patricians who bowed before women divinely dressed
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: Perpetually at strife with the Turk, the Pole has imbibed a taste for
Oriental splendor; he often sacrifices what is needful for the sake of
display. The men dress themselves out like women, yet the climate has
given them the tough constitution of Arabs.
The Pole, sublime in suffering, has tired his oppressors' arms by
sheer endurance of beating; and, in the nineteenth century, has
reproduced the spectacle presented by the early Christians. Infuse
only ten per cent of English cautiousness into the frank and open
Polish nature, and the magnanimous white eagle would at this day be
supreme wherever the two-headed eagle has sneaked in. A little
Machiavelism would have hindered Poland from helping to save Austria,
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