| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: the Vicomte de Troisville's daughters, now married to the Comte de
Montcornet, one of those of Napoleon's generals who went over to the
Bourbons. The Vidame held that a dinner-party of more than six persons
was beneath contempt. In that case, according to him, there was an end
alike of cookery and conversation, and a man could not sip his wine in
a proper frame of mind.
"I have not yet told you, my dear boy, where I mean to take you to-
night," he said, taking Victurnien's hands and tapping on them. "You
are going to see Mlle. des Touches; all the pretty women with any
pretensions to wit will be at her house en petit comite. Literature,
art, poetry, any sort of genius, in short, is held in great esteem
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Obsequious; Heaven his wonted face renewed,
And with fresh flowerets hill and valley smiled.
This saw his hapless foes, but stood obdured,
And to rebellious fight rallied their Powers,
Insensate, hope conceiving from despair.
In heavenly Spirits could such perverseness dwell?
But to convince the proud what signs avail,
Or wonders move the obdurate to relent?
They, hardened more by what might most reclaim,
Grieving to see his glory, at the sight
Took envy; and, aspiring to his highth,
Paradise Lost |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: existing consciousness of self treads the shadow-like doubt of its
hereafter. Will analogy help to answer the grewsome riddle of the
Sphinx? Are the laws we have learned to be true for matter true also
for mind? Matter we now know is indestructible; yet the form of it
with which we once were so fondly familiar vanishes never to return.
Is a like fate to be the lot of the soul? That mind should be
capable of annihilation is as inconceivable as that matter should
cease to be. Surely the spirit we feel existing round about us on
every side now has been from ever, and will be for ever to come.
But that portion of it which we each know as self, is it not like to a
drop of rain seen in its falling through the air? Indistinguishable
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