| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd. to the Philebus).
There are no descriptions of time, place or persons, in the Sophist and
Statesman, but we are plunged at once into philosophical discussions; the
poetical charm has disappeared, and those who have no taste for abstruse
metaphysics will greatly prefer the earlier dialogues to the later ones.
Plato is conscious of the change, and in the Statesman expressly accuses
himself of a tediousness in the two dialogues, which he ascribes to his
desire of developing the dialectical method. On the other hand, the
kindred spirit of Hegel seemed to find in the Sophist the crown and summit
of the Platonic philosophy--here is the place at which Plato most nearly
approaches to the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being. Nor will the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: are driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear
of starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe,
many regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the
laws of their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of
prostitution in Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure
as the Madonna, had met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough
and homely to make his way in society, and he was tired of tramping
the boulevard at night and of the kind of conquests made there by
gold. For some time past he had desired to bring a certain regularity
into an irregular life. He was struck by the beauty of the poor child
who had drifted by chance into his arms, and his determination to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: her chamber of pain, rigidly guarded, was almost wholly forbidden
him; he was feeling now moreover, in the face of doctors, nurses,
the two or three relatives attracted doubtless by the presumption
of what she had to "leave," how few were the rights, as they were
called in such cases, that he had to put forward, and how odd it
might even seem that their intimacy shouldn't have given him more
of them. The stupidest fourth cousin had more, even though she had
been nothing in such a person's life. She had been a feature of
features in HIS, for what else was it to have been so
indispensable? Strange beyond saying were the ways of existence,
baffling for him the anomaly of his lack, as he felt it to be, of
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