| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: along the front of slumbering houses, and Mr. Thomson not
altogether steady on his legs nor (to all appearance) easy in his
mind. The pair had reached the middle of the bridge when (as I
conceive the scene) the poor tippler started in some baseless fear
and looked behind him; the child, already shaken by the minister's
strange behaviour, started also; in so doing, she would jerk the
lantern; and for the space of a moment the lights and the shadows
would be all confounded. Then it was that to the unhinged toper
and the twittering child, a huge bulk of blackness seemed to sweep
down, to pass them close by as they stood upon the bridge, and to
vanish on the farther side in the general darkness of the night.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: consider, Crito, whether you really mean what you are saying. For this
opinion has never been held, and never will be held, by any considerable
number of persons; and those who are agreed and those who are not agreed
upon this point have no common ground, and can only despise one another
when they see how widely they differ. Tell me, then, whether you agree
with and assent to my first principle, that neither injury nor retaliation
nor warding off evil by evil is ever right. And shall that be the premiss
of our argument? Or do you decline and dissent from this? For so I have
ever thought, and continue to think; but, if you are of another opinion,
let me hear what you have to say. If, however, you remain of the same mind
as formerly, I will proceed to the next step.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: that we were both thought equally guilty of the murder, and that I was
considered the most clumsy. I tried to explain the crime by
somnambulism, and so protect my friend; but there I rambled and
contradicted myself. No, I am lost. I read my condemnation in the eyes
of my judges. They smiled incredulously. All is over. No more
uncertainty. To-morrow I shall be shot. I am not thinking of myself,"
he went on after a pause, "but of my poor mother." Then he stopped,
looked up to heaven, and shed no tears; his eyes were dry and strongly
convulsed. "Frederic--"
["Ah! true," cried Monsieur Hermann, with an air of triumph. "Yes, the
other's name was Frederic, Frederic! I remember now!"
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