| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: standard which was to be the model. A young man who at the first
glance did not fulfil the requisite conditions did not even get a
second look.
"Good Heavens! see how fat he is!" was with her the utmost expression
of contempt.
To hear her, people of respectable corpulence were incapable of
sentiment, bad husbands, and unfit for civilized society. Though it is
esteemed a beauty in the East, to be fat seemed to her a misfortune
for a woman; but in a man it was a crime. These paradoxical views were
amusing, thanks to a certain liveliness of rhetoric. The Count felt
nevertheless that by-and-by his daughter's affections, of which the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: Thus after many preparations and oppositions, both of the characters of men
and aspects of the truth, especially of the popular and philosophical
aspect; and after many interruptions and detentions by the way, which, as
Theodorus says in the Theaetetus, are quite as agreeable as the argument,
we arrive at the great Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge. This is
an aspect of the truth which was lost almost as soon as it was found; and
yet has to be recovered by every one for himself who would pass the limits
of proverbial and popular philosophy. The moral and intellectual are
always dividing, yet they must be reunited, and in the highest conception
of them are inseparable. The thesis of Socrates is not merely a hasty
assumption, but may be also deemed an anticipation of some 'metaphysic of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: "Is monsieur certain that I am myself thoroughly acquainted with
these studies?"
"I don't know; you ought to be at your age."
"But I never was at school, monsieur--"
"Indeed! What then were your friends--what was your aunt about?
She is very much to blame."
"No monsieur, no--my aunt is good--she is not to blame--she does
what she can; she lodges and nourishes me" (I report Mdlle.
Henri's phrases literally, and it was thus she translated from
the French). "She is not rich; she has only an annuity of twelve
hundred francs, and it would be impossible for her to send me to
The Professor |
