| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: taken before he heard a man's voice hailing him by name with many
execrations, and, looking over his shoulder, he beheld Charlie
Pendragon waving him with both arms to return. The shock of this
new incident was so sudden and profound, and Harry was already
worked into so high a state of nervous tension, that he could think
of nothing better than to accelerate his pace, and continue
running. He should certainly have remembered the scene in
Kensington Gardens; he should certainly have concluded that, where
the General was his enemy, Charlie Pendragon could be no other than
a friend. But such was the fever and perturbation of his mind that
he was struck by none of these considerations, and only continued
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: Socrates practises upon the youthful Cleinias in the Euthydemus; and he
characteristically attributes to Alcibiades the answers which he has
elicited from him. The definition of good is narrowed by successive
questions, and virtue is shown to be identical with knowledge. Here, as
elsewhere, Socrates awakens the consciousness not of sin but of ignorance.
Self-humiliation is the first step to knowledge, even of the commonest
things. No man knows how ignorant he is, and no man can arrive at virtue
and wisdom who has not once in his life, at least, been convicted of error.
The process by which the soul is elevated is not unlike that which
religious writers describe under the name of 'conversion,' if we substitute
the sense of ignorance for the consciousness of sin.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: are either so stupid, or so drunk, that it is
impossible to knock any sense at all out of
them.
I was informed that I should have to stay
there three days longer, because the "Adventure"
had not yet arrived from Ekaterinograd and
consequently could not start on the return
journey. What a misadventure![1] . . . But a
bad pun is no consolation to a Russian, and, for
the sake of something to occupy my thoughts,
I took it into my head to write down the story
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