| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: it, Monsieur d'Artagnan."
D'Artagnan opened the paper eagerly, and scanned it twice.
He could scarcely believe his eyes.
"And this commission is given you," continued the king, "not
only on account of your journey to Belle-Isle, but,
moreover, for your brave intervention at the Place de Greve.
There, likewise, you served me valiantly."
"Ah, ah!" said D'Artagnan, without his self-command being
able to prevent a blush from mounting to his eyes -- "you
know that also, sire?"
"Yes, I know it."
Ten Years Later |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: return to Thark, if Tal Hajus so commands.
"But," he continued, in his fierce guttural tones, "if you
run off with the red girl it is I who shall have to account to
Tal Hajus; it is I who shall have to face Tars Tarkas, and
either demonstrate my right to command, or the metal from
my dead carcass will go to a better man, for such is the
custom of the Tharks.
"I have no quarrel with Tars Tarkas; together we rule
supreme the greatest of the lesser communities among the
green men; we do not wish to fight between ourselves; and so
if you were dead, John Carter, I should be glad. Under two
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of
death, fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For the fear of death
is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of
knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their
fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is
not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the
conceit that a man knows what he does not know? And in this respect only I
believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be
wiser than they are:--that whereas I know but little of the world below, I
do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience
to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonourable, and I will
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