| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: hold the planks of a boat together. A young mother, who bore her baby
in her arms, and seemed to belong to the working class in Ostend,
moved aside to make room for the stranger. There was neither servility
nor scorn in her manner of doing this; it was a simple sign of the
goodwill by which the poor, who know by long experience the value of a
service and the warmth that fellowship brings, give expression to the
open-heartedness and the natural impulses of their souls; so artlessly
do they reveal their good qualities and their defects. The stranger
thanked her by a gesture full of gracious dignity, and took his place
between the young mother and the old soldier. Immediately behind him
sat a peasant and his son, a boy ten years of age. A beggar woman,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and
the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at
all? And if the person with whom I am arguing, says: Yes, but I do care;
then I do not leave him or let him go at once; but I proceed to interrogate
and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue in
him, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the
greater, and overvaluing the less. And I shall repeat the same words to
every one whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to
the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For know that this is the
command of God; and I believe that no greater good has ever happened in the
state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: from which they have been separated so many ages, was the sole view
and intention with which we undertook so long and toilsome a
journey, crossed so many seas, and passed so many deserts, with the
utmost hazard of our lives; I am certain that we travelled more than
seven thousand leagues before we arrived at our residence at
Fremona.
We came to this place, anciently called Maigoga, on the 21st of
June, as I have said before, and were obliged to continue there till
November, because the winter begins here in May, and its greatest
rigour is from the middle of June to the middle of September. The
rains that are almost continually falling in this season make it
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