| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: deprived himself of that slight solace; he would not
have dreamed of opposing Susan's wishes. Jim had
a great pity for the nervous whims, as he regarded
them, of women -- a pity so intense and tender that
it verged on respect and veneration. He passed his
nieces' house on the way to the minister's, and both
were looking out of windows and saw his lips moving.
"There he goes, talking to himself like a crazy
loon," said Amanda.
Alma nodded.
Jim went on, blissfully unconscious. He talked
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: nobler career in the future, we had all best bestir ourselves
to the utmost while we have the time. To equip a dull,
respectable person with wings would be but to make a parody of
an angel.
In short, if youth is not quite right in its opinions,
there is a strong probability that age is not much more so.
Undying hope is co-ruler of the human bosom with infallible
credulity. A man finds he has been wrong at every preceding
stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion
that he is at last entirely right. Mankind, after centuries
of failure, are still upon the eve of a thoroughly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: would not have preferred the poet or man of action to the philosopher, or
the virtue of custom to the virtue based upon ideas.
Also here, as in the Ion and Phaedrus, Plato appears to acknowledge an
unreasoning element in the higher nature of man. The philosopher only has
knowledge, and yet the statesman and the poet are inspired. There may be a
sort of irony in regarding in this way the gifts of genius. But there is
no reason to suppose that he is deriding them, any more than he is deriding
the phenomena of love or of enthusiasm in the Symposium, or of oracles in
the Apology, or of divine intimations when he is speaking of the daemonium
of Socrates. He recognizes the lower form of right opinion, as well as the
higher one of science, in the spirit of one who desires to include in his
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