| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: he was so occupied with the thought of recording his Discretion -
as an effect of the vow he had just uttered to his intimate
adversary - that the importance of this loomed large and something
had overtaken all ironically his sense of proportion. If there had
been a ladder applied to the front of the house, even one of the
vertiginous perpendiculars employed by painters and roofers and
sometimes left standing overnight, he would have managed somehow,
astride of the window-sill, to compass by outstretched leg and arm
that mode of descent. If there had been some such uncanny thing as
he had found in his room at hotels, a workable fire-escape in the
form of notched cable or a canvas shoot, he would have availed
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: and countless times n my sleep. So I was not
surprised, still later on in my life, to recognize
instantly, the first time I saw them, trees such as the
spruce, the yew, the birch, and the laurel. I had seen
them all before, and was seeing them even then, every
night, in my sleep.
This, as you have already discerned, violates the first
law of dreaming, namely, that in one's dreams one sees
only what he has seen in his waking life, or
combinations of the things he has seen in his waking
life. But all my dreams violated this law. In my
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: general interest in military studies, and greatly adding to the appearance
of the soldier in the field. Laches, the blunt warrior, is of opinion that
such an art is not knowledge, and cannot be of any value, because the
Lacedaemonians, those great masters of arms, neglect it. His own
experience in actual service has taught him that these pretenders are
useless and ridiculous. This man Stesilaus has been seen by him on board
ship making a very sorry exhibition of himself. The possession of the art
will make the coward rash, and subject the courageous, if he chance to make
a slip, to invidious remarks. And now let Socrates be taken into counsel.
As they differ he must decide.
Socrates would rather not decide the question by a plurality of votes: in
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