| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: I believe you are right, said Agathon, and I am disposed to think that his
intention in placing himself between you and me was only to divide us; but
he shall gain nothing by that move; for I will go and lie on the couch next
to you.
Yes, yes, replied Socrates, by all means come here and lie on the couch
below me.
Alas, said Alcibiades, how I am fooled by this man; he is determined to get
the better of me at every turn. I do beseech you, allow Agathon to lie
between us.
Certainly not, said Socrates, as you praised me, and I in turn ought to
praise my neighbour on the right, he will be out of order in praising me
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: the vaguely-felt foundation of his freedom from anxiety.
He reached his door in much satisfaction that his errand was done:
he opened it, and to his short-sighted eyes everything remained as
he had left it, except that the fire sent out a welcome increase of
heat. He trod about the floor while putting by his lantern and
throwing aside his hat and sack, so as to merge the marks of
Dunstan's feet on the sand in the marks of his own nailed boots.
Then he moved his pork nearer to the fire, and sat down to the
agreeable business of tending the meat and warming himself at the
same time.
Any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon his pale
Silas Marner |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: opposed to the political revolution which was at hand." And he goes
on to show how the principles of her ecclesiastical government, and
her political position, were such that the philosophes must needs
have been her enemies. But he mentions another fact which seems to
me to belong neither to the category of religion nor to that of
politics; a fact which, if he had done us the honour to enlarge upon
it, might have led him and his readers to a more true understanding
of the disrepute into which Christianity had fallen in France.
"The ecclesiastical authority had been specially employed in keeping
watch over the progress of thought; and the censorship of books was
a daily annoyance to the philosophes. By defending the common
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