| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: beautiful as well as the good:--no one is likely to hear them make any
further petition. And yet up to the present time they have not been less
fortunate than other men; or if they have sometimes met with misfortune,
the fault has not been due to their prayer. For surely, as I conceive, the
Gods have power either to grant our requests, or to send us the contrary of
what we ask.
And now I will relate to you a story which I have heard from certain of our
elders. It chanced that when the Athenians and Lacedaemonians were at war,
our city lost every battle by land and sea and never gained a victory. The
Athenians being annoyed and perplexed how to find a remedy for their
troubles, decided to send and enquire at the shrine of Ammon. Their envoys
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: them. Some of them drank, and some of them swore, and some of
them ate pie with their knives; there was only one difference
between them and all the rest of the populace--that they were men
with a hope, with a cause to fight for and suffer for. There
came times to Jurgis when the vision seemed far-off and pale, and
a glass of beer loomed large in comparison; but if the glass led
to another glass, and to too many glasses, he had something to
spur him to remorse and resolution on the morrow. It was so
evidently a wicked thing to spend one's pennies for drink, when
the working class was wandering in darkness, and waiting to be
delivered; the price of a glass of beer would buy fifty copies of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: attitude was the final tap on the nail that was to fix fast my
luckless idea, convert it into the obsession of which I'm for ever
conscious.
But this only helped me the more to be artful, to be adroit, to
allow time to elapse before renewing my suit. There were plenty of
speculations for the interval, and one of them was deeply
absorbing. Corvick had kept his information from his young friend
till after the removal of the last barrier to their intimacy - then
only had he let the cat out of the bag. Was it Gwendolen's idea,
taking a hint from him, to liberate this animal only on the basis
of the renewal of such a relation? Was the figure in the carpet
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