| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: Saviour in His crown of thorns. 'Lord, help me! Lord, help me!'
he exclaimed, crossing himself and bowing low. Then he went to
the door, and opening it into the tiny porch, felt for the hook
that fastened the outer door and began to lift it. He heard
steps outside. She was coming from the window to the door.
'Ah!' she suddenly exclaimed, and he understood that she had
stepped into the puddle that the dripping from the roof had
formed at the threshold. His hands trembled, and he could not
raise the hook of the tightly closed door.
'Oh, what are you doing? Let me in! I am all wet. I am frozen!
You are thinking about saving your soul and are letting me freeze
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: prefect, assisted by a council; the commune by a mayor, assisted
by a municipal council. All were appointed by the ministers, and
not by election, as under the Republic.
This system, which created the omnipotent State and a powerful
centralisation, was retained by all subsequent Governments and is
preserved to-day. Centralisation being, in spite of its
drawbacks, the only means of avoiding local tyrannies in a
country profoundly divided within itself, has always been
maintained.
This organisation, based on a profound knowledge of the soul of
the French people, immediately restored that tranquillity and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: profound and penetrating; he grasped its significance, as a
whole, the better, because he saw it across a grave. All men, all
things, he analyzed once and for all; he summed up the Past,
represented by its records; the Present in the law, its
crystallized form; the Future, revealed by religion. He took
spirit and matter, and flung them into his crucible, and found--
Nothing. Thenceforward he became DON JUAN.
At the outset of his life, in the prime of youth and the beauty
of youth, he knew the illusions of life for what they were; he
despised the world, and made the utmost of the world. His
felicity could not have been of the bourgeois kind, rejoicing in
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