| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: The conceit of this last supposition was so foreign to the modest
nature and Teutonic timidity of the captain that he scolded himself
for admitting it, and went to bed, resolved to await events before
deciding on a course.
The next day Clementine breakfasted very contentedly without Paz, and
without even noticing his disobedience to her orders. It happened to
be her reception day, when the house was thrown open with a splendor
that was semi-royal. She paid no attention to the absence of Comte
Paz, on whom all the burden of these parade days fell.
"Good!" thought he, as he heard the last carriages driving away at two
in the morning; "it was only the caprice or the curiosity of a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: he remembered my mother, if either my uncle or old Lichtenstein
had been man enough to stand being given away like that.
In that English countryside of my boyhood every human being had a
"place." It belonged to you from your birth like the colour of
your eyes, it was inextricably your destiny. Above you were
your betters, below you were your inferiors, and there were even
an unstable questionable few, cases so disputable that you might
for the rough purposes of every day at least, regard them as your
equals. Head and centre of our system was Lady Drew, her
"leddyship," shrivelled, garrulous, with a wonderful memory for
genealogies and very, very old, and beside her and nearly as old,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: teaching of the Cynics--unless the argument in the Protagoras, that the
virtues are one and not many, may be supposed to contain a reference to
their views, as well as to those of Socrates; and unless they are the
school alluded to in the Philebus, which is described as 'being very
skilful in physics, and as maintaining pleasure to be the absence of pain.'
That Antisthenes wrote a book called 'Physicus,' is hardly a sufficient
reason for describing them as skilful in physics, which appear to have been
very alien to the tendency of the Cynics.
The Idealism of the fourth century before Christ in Greece, as in other
ages and countries, seems to have provoked a reaction towards Materialism.
The maintainers of this doctrine are described in the Theaetetus as
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