| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: there, you must make up your mind to it. I used to live in good
style, too; I had two horses, your honor, three cows, I used to
keep twenty head of sheep; but the time has come, and I am left
with nothing but a wretched bag, and even that is not mine but
Government property. And now in our Nedoshtchotova, if the truth
is to be told, my house is the worst of the lot. Makey had four
footmen, and now Makey is a footman himself. Petrak had four
laborers, and now Petrak is a laborer himself."
"How was it you became poor?" asked the examining magistrate.
"My sons drink terribly. I could not tell you how they drink, you
wouldn't believe it."
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: cathedral, the gleam of these masses of candles barely lighted the
immense building, because the strong shadows of the columns, projected
among the galleries, produced fantastic forms which increased the
darkness that already wrapped in gloom the arches, the vaulted
ceilings, and the lateral chapels, always sombre, even at mid-day.
The crowd presented effects that were no less picturesque. Certain
figures were so vaguely defined in the "chiaroscuro" that they seemed
like phantoms; whereas others, standing in a full gleam of the
scattered light, attracted attention like the principal heads in a
picture. Some statues seemed animated, some men seemed petrified. Here
and there eyes shone in the flutings of the columns, the floor
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: Archelaus and other tyrants and rhetoricians and potentates? (Compare
Republic.)
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: May not their way of proceeding, my friend, be compared to the
conduct of a person who is afflicted with the worst of diseases and yet
contrives not to pay the penalty to the physician for his sins against his
constitution, and will not be cured, because, like a child, he is afraid of
the pain of being burned or cut:--Is not that a parallel case?
POLUS: Yes, truly.
SOCRATES: He would seem as if he did not know the nature of health and
bodily vigour; and if we are right, Polus, in our previous conclusions,
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