| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: her joy; nothing about her betrayed emotion; she was able to efface
all traces of pleasure at having met them again; in fact, she was
impassible. Catherine, her pretty maid, daughter of her former nurse,
and Gothard, both in the secret, modelled their behavior upon hers.
Catherine was nineteen years old. At that age a girl is a fanatic and
would let her throat be cut before betraying a thought of one she
loves. As for Gothard, merely to inhale the perfume which the countess
used in her hair and among her clothes he would have born the rack
without a word.
CHAPTER V
ROYALIST HOMES AND PORTRAITS UNDER THE CONSULATE
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: were scared out of their wits so they wired to the town
beyond for help. I don't know how many of them there
are now. Even if there are a hell of a lot of them, it
doesn't cut any ice! Most of them aren't soldiers, you
know, but drafted men; if just one of them starts mu-
tinying, the rest will follow like sheep. My brother was
drafted; they've got him there. I'll go along with you
and signal to him; all of them will desert and follow you.
Then we'll only have the officers to deal with! If you want
to give me a gun or something. . . ."
"No more rifles left, brother. But I guess you can
The Underdogs |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: be only 'spiritually discerned,' men feel that in pictures and images,
whether painted or carved, or described in words only, we have not the
substance but the shadow of the truth which is in heaven. There is no
reason to suppose that in the fairest works of Greek art, Plato ever
conceived himself to behold an image, however faint, of ideal truths. 'Not
in that way was wisdom seen.'
We may now pass on to the second part of the Dialogue, which is a criticism
on the first. Rhetoric is assailed on various grounds: first, as desiring
to persuade, without a knowledge of the truth; and secondly, as ignoring
the distinction between certain and probable matter. The three speeches
are then passed in review: the first of them has no definition of the
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