| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: inhabitants of Jupiter will not cultivate the sciences, which they
call darkness; those of Mercury abhor the expression of ideas by
speech, which seems to them too material,--their language is ocular;
those of Saturn are continually tempted by evil spirits; those of the
Moon are as small as six-year-old children, their voices issue from
the abdomen, on which they crawl; those of Venus are gigantic in
height, but stupid, and live by robbery,--although a part of this
latter planet is inhabited by beings of great sweetness, who live in
the love of Good. In short, he describes the customs and morals of all
the peoples attached to the different globes, and explains the general
meaning of their existence as related to the universe in terms so
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: crossed shins.
His daily visits were so regular that mother badger placed a
fur rug in his place. She did not wish a guest in her dwelling to
sit upon the bare hard ground.
At last one time when the bear returned, his nose was bright
and black. His coat was glossy. He had grown fat upon the
badger's hospitality.
As he entered the dwelling a pair of wicked gleams shot out of
his shaggy head. Surprised by the strange behavior of the guest
who remained standing upon the rug, leaning his round back against
the wall, father badger queried: "How, my friend! What?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: Their eristic, or rather Socratic character; they belong to the class
called dialogues of search (Greek), which have no conclusion. (iii) The
absence in them of certain favourite notions of Plato, such as the doctrine
of recollection and of the Platonic ideas; the questions, whether virtue
can be taught; whether the virtues are one or many. (iv) They have a want
of depth, when compared with the dialogues of the middle and later period;
and a youthful beauty and grace which is wanting in the later ones. (v)
Their resemblance to one another; in all the three boyhood has a great
part. These reasons have various degrees of weight in determining their
place in the catalogue of the Platonic writings, though they are not
conclusive. No arrangement of the Platonic dialogues can be strictly
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