| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: the sense of self. Asia is more courteous than Europe, Europe than
America. Particular races show the same concomitance of
characteristics. France, the most impersonal nation of Europe, is at
the same time the most polite.
Considered a priori, the connection between the two is not far to
seek. Impersonality, by lessening the interest in one's self,
induces one to take an interest in others. Introspection tends to
make of man a solitary animal, the absence of it a social one.
The more impersonal the people, the more will the community supplant
the individual in the popular estimation. The type becomes the
interesting thing to man, as it always is to nature. Then, as the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: with all her children.
We shall have no acquaintances; no one will come in to bore us
with gossip.
It is a wonderful dream; but that is not all that I let myself
dream of.
I shall be married. My wife will be gentle, kind, and
affectionate; she will love you as I do; we shall have children who
will call you granny; you will live in the big house, in the same
room on the top floor where my grandmother lived before.
The whole house will be run on the same lines as it was in my
father's time, and we shall begin the same life over again, but
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: If a stray calf or cow invaded the garden of one of the farmers,
the other willingly drove it away, saying: "Be careful, neighbor,
that your stock does not again stray into my garden; we should
put a fence up." In the same way they had no secrets from each
other. The doors of their houses and barns had neither bolts nor
locks, so sure were they of each other's honesty. Not a shadow
of suspicion darkened their daily intercourse.
Thus lived the old people.
In time the younger members of the two households started
farming. It soon became apparent that they would not get along
as peacefully as the old people had done, for they began
The Kreutzer Sonata |
