| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: clever and learned people--those, of course,
who know what in reality the law is--only pur-
sue their own pleasures. And they are the bet-
ter for it.
Previous to the incident of the forged coupon,
Vassily could not actually believe that rich people
lived without any moral law. But after that,
still more after having perjured himself, and not
being the worse for it in spite of his fears--on
the contrary, he had gained ten roubles out of it
--Vassily became firmly convinced that no moral
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands;
we inherit our constitution; we stand buffet among friends and
enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with
unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed
to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be
afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us,
and it is not meant to help us. It is not even its own reward,
except for the self-centred and - I had almost said - the
unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he
want, he shall do better to let that organ perish from disuse. And
to avoid the penalties of the law, and the minor CAPITIS DIMINUTIO
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex;
assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their
own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.
And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews
so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.
The long chains of simple and easy reasonings by means of which
geometers are accustomed to reach the conclusions of their most
difficult demonstrations, had led me to imagine that all things,
to the knowledge of which man is competent, are mutually connected
in the same way, and that there is nothing so far removed from us
as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it,
Reason Discourse |
