| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme peril of our human state; and
therefore the utmost care should be taken. Let each one of us leave every
other kind of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only, if peradventure
he may be able to learn and may find some one who will make him able to
learn and discern between good and evil, and so to choose always and
everywhere the better life as he has opportunity. He should consider the
bearing of all these things which have been mentioned severally and
collectively upon virtue; he should know what the effect of beauty is when
combined with poverty or wealth in a particular soul, and what are the good
and evil consequences of noble and humble birth, of private and public
station, of strength and weakness, of cleverness and dullness, and of all
The Republic |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: ancient Humanity of which the moderns retain no memory. Man never
pauses; he goes his round, he vegetates until the appointed day when
his Axe falls. If this wave force, this pressure of bitter waters
prevents all progress, no doubt it also warns of death. Spirits
prepared by faith among the higher souls of earth can alone perceive
the mystic ladder of Jacob.
After listening to Seraphita's answer in which (being earnestly
questioned) she unrolled before their eyes a Divine Perspective,--as
an organ fills a church with sonorous sound and reveals a musical
universe, its solemn tones rising to the loftiest arches and playing,
like light, upon their foliated capitals,--Wilfrid returned to his own
Seraphita |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: known, you and I, on detecting the mocking smile of a gaping seam
in a shoe, or hearing the armhole of a coat split, I drank
nothing but water; I regarded a cafe with distant respect.
Zoppi's seemed to me a promised land where none but the Lucullus
of the pays Latin had a right of entry. 'Shall I ever take a cup
of coffee there with milk in it?' said I to myself, 'or play a
game of dominoes?'
"I threw into my work the fury I felt at my misery. I tried to
master positive knowledge so as to acquire the greatest personal
value, and merit the position I should hold as soon as I could
escape from nothingness. I consumed more oil than bread; the
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