| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: better far than those who do wrong involuntarily. Sometimes, however, I am
of the opposite opinion; for I am all abroad in my ideas about this matter,
a condition obviously occasioned by ignorance. And just now I happen to be
in a crisis of my disorder at which those who err voluntarily appear to me
better than those who err involuntarily. My present state of mind is due
to our previous argument, which inclines me to believe that in general
those who do wrong involuntarily are worse than those who do wrong
voluntarily, and therefore I hope that you will be good to me, and not
refuse to heal me; for you will do me a much greater benefit if you cure my
soul of ignorance, than you would if you were to cure my body of disease.
I must, however, tell you beforehand, that if you make a long oration to me
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: legislature had power to keep slavery out of any United States
Territory. This decision placed Senator Douglas in a most curious
position. It justified him in repealing the Missouri Compromise,
but at the same time it absolutely denied his statement that the
people of a Territory had a right to settle the slavery question
to suit themselves. Being a clever juggler with words, he
explained away the difference by saying that a master might have
a perfect right to his slave in a Territory, and yet that right
could do him no good unless it were protected by laws in force
where his slave happened to be. Such laws depended entirely on
the will of the people living in the Territory, and so, after
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: They got down. Fenella put her hand on the gate, and the big, trembling
dew-drops soaked through her glove-tips. Up a little path of round white
pebbles they went, with drenched sleeping flowers on either side.
Grandma's delicate white picotees were so heavy with dew that they were
fallen, but their sweet smell was part of the cold morning. The blinds
were down in the little house; they mounted the steps on to the veranda. A
pair of old bluchers was on one side of the door, and a large red watering-
can on the other.
"Tut! tut! Your grandpa," said grandma. She turned the handle. Not a
sound. She called, "Walter!" And immediately a deep voice that sounded
half stifled called back, "Is that you, Mary?"
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