| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: could have taken measures to protect it.
But, although these historical conjectures have some foundation so far
as the inaction of Louis XI. is concerned, it is not so as regards
Cornelius Hoogworst. There was no inaction there. The silversmith
spent the first days which succeeded that fatal night in ceaseless
occupation. Like carnivorous animals confined in cages, he went and
came, smelling for gold in every corner of his house; he studied the
cracks and crevices, he sounded the walls, he besought the trees of
the garden, the foundations of the house, the roofs of the turrets,
the earth and the heavens, to give him back his treasure. Often he
stood motionless for hours, casting his eyes on all sides, plunging
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: purchase. "I am not going to sell breadfruit to you people," said
the merchant; "come and take what you like." Here Malietoa
interrupted himself to say it was the only tree bearing in the
Cameroons. "The governor had none, or he would have given it to
me." On the passage from the Cameroons to Germany, he had great
delight to see the cliffs of England. He saw "the rocks shining in
the sun, and three hours later was surprised to find them sunk in
the heavens." He saw also wharves and immense buildings; perhaps
Dover and its castle. In Hamburg, after breakfast, Mr. Weber, who
had now finally "ceased from troubling" Samoa, came on board, and
carried him ashore "suitably" in a steam launch to "a large house
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: space, which is indestructible, and is perceived by a kind of spurious
reason without the help of sense. This is presented to us in a dreamy
manner, and yet is said to be necessary, for we say that all things must be
somewhere in space. For they are the images of other things and must
therefore have a separate existence and exist in something (i.e. in space).
But true reason assures us that while two things (i.e. the idea and the
image) are different they cannot inhere in one another, so as to be one and
two at the same time.
To sum up: Being and generation and space, these three, existed before the
heavens, and the nurse or vessel of generation, moistened by water and
inflamed by fire, and taking the forms of air and earth, assumed various
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