| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: who already idolized her child?
As I write, our little Armand is playing, shouting, laughing. What can
be the cause of this terrible disease with children? Vainly do I try
to puzzle it out, remembering that I am again with child. Is it
teething? Is it some peculiar process in the brain? Is there something
wrong with the nervous system of children who are subject to
convulsions? All these thoughts disquiet me, in view alike of the
present and the future. Our country doctor holds to the theory of
nervous trouble produced by teething. I would give every tooth in my
head to see little Armand's all through. The sight of one of those
little white pearls peeping out of the swollen gum brings a cold sweat
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: however unenlightened they may be, never afford the same
spectacle, because in them instruction is nearly equally diffused
between the monarch and the leading members of the community.
The pacha who now rules in Egypt found the population of
that country composed of men exceedingly ignorant and equal, and
he has borrowed the science and ability of Europe to govern that
people. As the personal attainments of the sovereign are thus
combined with the ignorance and democratic weakness of his
subjects, the utmost centralization has been established without
impediment, and the pacha has made the country his manufactory,
and the inhabitants his workmen.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: loses by them; to him at any rate the sheep and the cattle are not
wealth?
Crit. That is the conclusion I draw.
Soc. It appears, you hold to the position that wealth consists of
things which benefit, while things which injure are not wealth?
Crit. Just so.
Soc. The same things, in fact, are wealth or not wealth, according as
a man knows or does not know the use to make of them? To take an
instance, a flute may be wealth to him who is sufficiently skilled to
play upon it, but the same instrument is no better than the stones we
tread under our feet to him who is not so skilled . . . unless indeed
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