| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: bore, in the "friend's" language, the modest title of "corrections
beforehand," and there is no doubt that Márya
Alexandróvna was right, for no one will ever know where what
my father wrote ends and where his concessions to Mr. ----'s
persistent "corrections beforehand" begin, all the more as this
careful adviser had the forethought to arrange that when my father
answered his letters he was always to return him the letters they
were answers to.¹
Besides the desire for death that my father displayed, in the
last years of his life he cherished another dream, which he made no
secret of his hope of realizing, and that was the desire to suffer
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: beginning of things. This mind-seed takes root in some cases and
not in others, according to the soil it finds. And as certain
traits develop and others do not, one man turns out very differently
from his neighbor. Such inevitable distinction implies furthermore
that the man shall be sensible of it. Consciousness is the
necessary attribute of mental action. Not only is it the sole way
we have of knowing mind; without it there would be no mind to know.
Not to be conscious of one's self is, mentally speaking, not to be.
This complex entity, this little cosmos of a world, the "I," has for
its very law of existence self-consciousness, while personality is
the effect it produces upon the consciousness of others.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: Socrates. 'One of the best of men, and a proficient in the best and
noblest of experimental arts,' etc., replies Polus, in rhetorical and
balanced phrases. Socrates is dissatisfied at the length and unmeaningness
of the answer; he tells the disconcerted volunteer that he has mistaken the
quality for the nature of the art, and remarks to Gorgias, that Polus has
learnt how to make a speech, but not how to answer a question. He wishes
that Gorgias would answer him. Gorgias is willing enough, and replies to
the question asked by Chaerephon,--that he is a rhetorician, and in Homeric
language, 'boasts himself to be a good one.' At the request of Socrates he
promises to be brief; for 'he can be as long as he pleases, and as short as
he pleases.' Socrates would have him bestow his length on others, and
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