| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: the truth. To understand him, we must make abstraction of morality and of
the Greek manner of regarding the relation of the sexes. In this, as in
his other discussions about love, what Plato says of the loves of men must
be transferred to the loves of women before we can attach any serious
meaning to his words. Had he lived in our times he would have made the
transposition himself. But seeing in his own age the impossibility of
woman being the intellectual helpmate or friend of man (except in the rare
instances of a Diotima or an Aspasia), seeing that, even as to personal
beauty, her place was taken by young mankind instead of womankind, he tries
to work out the problem of love without regard to the distinctions of
nature. And full of the evils which he recognized as flowing from the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: My hair grew long, and became matted together. I am told that
even now my eyes have a strange brightness, a swift alertness
of movement.
At first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beach
watching for a ship, hoping and praying for a ship.
I counted on the "Ipecacuanha" returning as the year wore on;
but she never came. Five times I saw sails, and thrice smoke;
but nothing ever touched the island. I always had a bonfire ready,
but no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island was taken to account
for that.
It was only about September or October that I began to think of making
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: they are afraid of intrigues."
Bixiou. "What intrigues?"
Fleury. "Baudoyer's, confound him! The priests uphold him; here's
another article in the liberal journal,--only half a dozen lines, but
they are queer" [reads]:
"Certain persons spoke last night in the lobby of the Opera-house
of the return of Monsieur de Chateaubriand to the ministry, basing
their opinion on the choice made of Monsieur Rabourdin (the
protege of friends of the noble viscount) to fill the office for
which Monsieur Baudoyer was first selected. The clerical party is
not likely to withdraw unless in deference to the great writer.
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