| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: worthy of the old school, Emilie heard the Vicomte de Longueville
announced. In the corner of the room where she was sitting, playing
piquet with the Bishop of Persepolis, her agitation was not observed;
she turned her head and saw her former lover come in, in all the
freshness of youth. His father's death, and then that of his brother,
killed by the severe climate of Saint-Petersburg, had placed on
Maximilien's head the hereditary plumes of the French peer's hat. His
fortune matched his learning and his merits; only the day before his
youthful and fervid eloquence had dazzled the Assembly. At this moment
he stood before the Countess, free, and graced with all the advantages
she had formerly required of her ideal. Every mother with a daughter
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: resignation to the divine will, and the certainty that no evil can happen
to the good man either in life or death. His absolute truthfulness seems
to hinder him from asserting positively more than this; and he makes no
attempt to veil his ignorance in mythology and figures of speech. The
gentleness of the first part of the speech contrasts with the aggravated,
almost threatening, tone of the conclusion. He characteristically remarks
that he will not speak as a rhetorician, that is to say, he will not make a
regular defence such as Lysias or one of the orators might have composed
for him, or, according to some accounts, did compose for him. But he first
procures himself a hearing by conciliatory words. He does not attack the
Sophists; for they were open to the same charges as himself; they were
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: the folly of hereditary right; if there are any so weak as to believe it,
let them promiscuously worship the ass and lion, and welcome.
I shall neither copy their humility, nor disturb their devotion.
Yet I should be glad to ask how they suppose kings came at first? The
question admits but of three answers, viz. either by lot, by election,
or by usurpation. If the first king was taken by lot, it establishes a
precedent for the next, which excludes hereditary succession. Saul was
by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary, neither does it appear
from that transaction there was any intention it ever should be. If the
first king of any country was by election, that likewise establishes a
precedent for the next; for to say, that the RIGHT of all future
Common Sense |
