| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: to the family. They sought their wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or
in Holland; so that the time-honored domestic customs might be
perpetuated around their hearthstones. This social group became more
and more restricted, until, at the close of the last century, it
mustered only some seven or eight families of the parliamentary
nobility, whose manners and flowing robes of office and magisterial
gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with the habits of their
life.
The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that
was well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty
of the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: the material equals, and reflected that all these apparent equals strive to
attain absolute equality, but fall short of it?
Very true.
And we recognize also that this absolute equality has only been known, and
can only be known, through the medium of sight or touch, or of some other
of the senses, which are all alike in this respect?
Yes, Socrates, as far as the argument is concerned, one of them is the same
as the other.
From the senses then is derived the knowledge that all sensible things aim
at an absolute equality of which they fall short?
Yes.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of the lower branches of the trees he now had reached.
The stems were bare for a distance of some fifteen feet--at
least on those trees which Perry attempted to ascend,
for the suggestion of safety carried by the larger of
the forest giants had evidently attracted him to them.
A dozen times he scrambled up the trunks like a huge cat
only to fall back to the ground once more, and with each
failure he cast a horrified glance over his shoulder at
the oncoming brute, simultaneously emitting terror-stricken
shrieks that awoke the echoes of the grim forest.
At length he spied a dangling creeper about the bigness
At the Earth's Core |
