| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: first conversation I no longer doubted his innocence; I asked, and
obtained the favor of staying several hours with him. I saw him again
at intervals, and the poor lad let me in without concealment to all
his thoughts. He believed himself both innocent and guilty.
Remembering the horrible temptation which he had had the strength to
resist, he feared he might have done in sleep, in a fit of
somnambulism, the crime he had dreamed of awake.
"But your companion?" I said to him.
"Oh!" he cried eagerly. "Wilhelm is incapable of--"
He did not even finish his sentence. At that warm defence, so full of
youth and manly virtue, I pressed his hand.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: and the good sometimes by mistake.
"The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of
happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from
thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid
obscurity. For what can hinder the satisfaction or intercept the
expectations of him whose abilities are adequate to his
employments, who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of his
influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he trusts, and
whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear? Surely he has
nothing to do but to love and to be loved; to be virtuous and to be
happy."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: between those of Abstraction and Instinct, there are beings in
whom the attributes of both combine and produce a mixture; these
are men of genius.
XVIII
Specialism is necessarily the most perfect expression of man, and
he is the link binding the visible world to the higher worlds; he
acts, sees, and feels by his inner powers. The man of Abstraction
thinks. The man of Instinct acts.
XIX
Hence man has three degrees. That of Instinct, below the average;
that of Abstraction, the general average; that of Specialism,
Louis Lambert |
