| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: containing mother or nurse of all things. It had not that sort of
consistency to Plato which has been given to it in modern times by geometry
and metaphysics. Neither of the Greek words by which it is described are
so purely abstract as the English word 'space' or the Latin 'spatium.'
Neither Plato nor any other Greek would have spoken of (Greek) or (Greek)
in the same manner as we speak of 'time' and 'space.'
Yet space is also of a very permanent or even eternal nature; and Plato
seems more willing to admit of the unreality of time than of the unreality
of space; because, as he says, all things must necessarily exist in space.
We, on the other hand, are disposed to fancy that even if space were
annihilated time might still survive. He admits indeed that our knowledge
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: where, indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed
on the education of her children tended to keep her.
Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this
household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of
conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons,
secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people.
Balthazar Claes's passion for his wife, which she had known how to
perpetuate, seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn
vigor and fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far
better than the cultivation of tulips (though to that he had always
had a leaning), and dispensed him from the duty of following a mania
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: "On the contrary," said Richard, "it is the number of things that suggest
it. This newspaper here, that has arrived since I was last in the room,
has a column which reminds me very forcibly of the experience that I have
selected to tell you. But I think the most appropriate of all is that
picture." He pointed to the largest picture on the wall. "'Breaking Home
Ties' is its title, I remember very well. It is a replica of the original
that drew such crowds in the Art Building at the World's Fair."
While Richard was saying this, his wife had possessed herself of the
newspaper, and he now observed how eagerly she was scanning its pages.
"It is the financial column, Ethel, that recalls my story."
Ethel, after a hopeless glance at this, resumed her seat near the sofa by
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