| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: up in the morning to do your lessons."
We would say a lingering good night, on the lookout for any
chance for delay, and at last would go down-stairs through the
arches, annoyed at the thought that we were children still and
had to go to bed while the grown-ups could stay up as long as
ever they liked.
A JOURNEY TO THE STEPPES
WHEN I was still a child and had not yet read "War and Peace," I
was told that Natásha Rostóf was Aunt
Tánya. When my father was asked whether that was true,
and whether Dmitry Rostóf was such and such a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: were under the empire of a powerful historical suggestion. The
task of the philosopher is to investigate what it is which
subsists of ancient beliefs beneath their apparent changes, and
to identify amid the moving flux of opinions the part determined
by general beliefs and the genius of the race.
In the absence of this philosophic test it might be supposed that
crowds change their political or religious beliefs frequently and
at will. All history, whether political, religious, artistic, or
literary, seems to prove that such is the case.
As an example, let us take a very short period of French history,
merely that from 1790 to 1820, a period of thirty years'
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: PERICLES.
I am Pericles of Tyre: but tell me now
My drown'd queen's name, as in the rest you said
Thou hast been godlike perfect,
The heir of kingdoms and another like
To Pericles thy father.
MARINA.
Is it no more to be your daughter than
To say my mother's name was Thaisa?
Thaisa was my mother, who did end
The minute I began.
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