| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: as would appear, out of their great possessions, which are under the
control of anybody rather than of you, and have no use of your own fair
person, which is tended and taken care of by another; while you, Lysis, are
master of nobody, and can do nothing?
Why, he said, Socrates, the reason is that I am not of age.
I doubt whether that is the real reason, I said; for I should imagine that
your father Democrates, and your mother, do permit you to do many things
already, and do not wait until you are of age: for example, if they want
anything read or written, you, I presume, would be the first person in the
house who is summoned by them.
Very true.
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: man in virtue of his chin. He had something of an East Indian
cast, but taller and stronger: his nose hooked, his face narrow,
his forehead very high, the whole elaborately tattooed. I may say
I have never entertained a guest so trying. In the least
particular he must be waited on; he would not go to the scuttle-
butt for water; he would not even reach to get the glass, it must
be given him in his hand; if aid were denied him, he would fold his
arms, bow his head, and go without: only the work would suffer.
Early the first forenoon he called aloud for biscuit and salmon;
biscuit and ham were brought; he looked on them inscrutably, and
signed they should be set aside. A number of considerations
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: he felt almost ready to forgive this father now about to die for
having lived so long. He had an accession of filial piety, like a
thief's return in thought to honesty at the prospect of a million
adroitly stolen.
Before long Don Juan had crossed the lofty, chilly suite of rooms
in which his father lived; the penetrating influences of the damp
close air, the mustiness diffused by old tapestries and presses
thickly covered with dust had passed into him, and now he stood
in the old man's antiquated room, in the repulsive presence of
the deathbed, beside a dying fire. A flickering lamp on a Gothic
table sent broad uncertain shafts of light, fainter or brighter,
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