| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: person looked for the cause of it. According to the proclivities of
each reasoner, play, love, ambition, hidden disorders, and vices,
explained the catastrophe, the last scene of a drama begun in 1812.
Two men alone, a marquis and former deputy, and an aged physician,
knew that Philippe de Sucy was one of those strong men to whom God has
given the unhappy power of issuing daily in triumph from awful combats
which they fight with an unseen monster. If, for a moment, God
withdraws from such men His all-powerful hand, they succumb.
ADDENDUM
The following personage appears in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Note: Adieu is also entitled Farewell.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: lying at the foot of Diana's side ladder told me that
the captain of the tug had gone away in his gig
some time ago.
I let my fellows pull an easy stroke; because of
the heavy dew the clear sparkle of the stars seemed
to fall on me cold and wetting. There was a sense
of lurking gruesome horror somewhere in my mind,
and it was mingled with clear and grotesque
images. Schomberg's gastronomic tittle-tattle
was responsible for these; and I half hoped I
should never see Falk again. But the first thing
Falk |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: before a hen or a hen before an egg.
And, in fact, when it was said, in regard to criminal geography,
that the extent and quality of crime in such and such a province,
instead of being the effect of biological conditions (race, &c.)
and physical conditions (climate, soil, &c.), were but the effect
of social and economic conditions (of rural and industrial
pursuits, and the like), I was able to make a very simple reply.
For, apart even from statistical proofs, if the social
conditions of such and such a province, which have an
unquestionable influence, are really the absolute and exclusive
cause of crime, we may still ask whether these social conditions
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