| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: revellers' elbows stood the 1820 port in its fine, fat, old, dingy
bottle, going pretty fast. Mr. Diggs was nearing the end of Antietam."
That morning of the 18th, while McClellan was holdin' us squattin' and
cussin'," he was saying to Bertie, when some sort of shuffling sound in
the corner caught their attention. We can never know how it happened.
Billy ought to know, but does not, and Mrs. Diggs allowed no subsequent
reference to the casualty. But there she stood with her entire hair at
right angles. The Grecian knot extended above her left ear, and her
nose stuck through one set of Anne d'Autriche. Beside her Billy stood,
solemn as a stone, yet with a sort of relief glazed upon his face.
Mr. Diggs sat straight up at the vision of his spouse. "Flouncing
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: having no limit of space or time: this is the highest knowledge of which
the human mind is capable. Plato does not go on to ask whether the
individual is absorbed in the sea of light and beauty or retains his
personality. Enough for him to have attained the true beauty or good,
without enquiring precisely into the relation in which human beings stood
to it. That the soul has such a reach of thought, and is capable of
partaking of the eternal nature, seems to imply that she too is eternal
(compare Phaedrus). But Plato does not distinguish the eternal in man from
the eternal in the world or in God. He is willing to rest in the
contemplation of the idea, which to him is the cause of all things (Rep.),
and has no strength to go further.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: through which they could watch each other's faintest motions
but which no sound could ever traverse...
They drove to a restaurant on the Boulevard, and there, in
their intimate corner of the serried scene, the sense of
what was unspoken between them gradually ceased to oppress
her. He looked so light-hearted and handsome, so
ingenuously proud of her, so openly happy at being with her,
that no other fact could seem real in his presence. He had
learned that the Ambassador was to spend two days in Paris,
and he had reason to hope that in consequence his own
departure for London would be deferred. He was exhilarated
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