| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: integrity, greatly respected, and for whom Madame de Dey had shown
much esteem. There all the aspirants for the hand of the rich widow
had a tale to tell that was more or less probable; and each expected
to turn to his own profit the secret event which he thus recounted.
The public prosecutor imagined a whole drama to result in the return
by night of Madame de Dey's son, the emigre. The mayor was convinced
that a priest who refused the oath had arrived from La Vendee and
asked for asylum; but the day being Friday, the purchase of a hare
embarrassed the good mayor not a little. The judge of the district
court held firmly to the theory of a Chouan leader or a body of
Vendeans hotly pursued. Others were convinced that the person thus
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: SOCRATES: And what will the evil be, whither tending and what affecting,
in the disobedient person?
CRITO: Clearly, affecting the body; that is what is destroyed by the evil.
SOCRATES: Very good; and is not this true, Crito, of other things which we
need not separately enumerate? In questions of just and unjust, fair and
foul, good and evil, which are the subjects of our present consultation,
ought we to follow the opinion of the many and to fear them; or the opinion
of the one man who has understanding? ought we not to fear and reverence
him more than all the rest of the world: and if we desert him shall we not
destroy and injure that principle in us which may be assumed to be improved
by justice and deteriorated by injustice;--there is such a principle?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: still further before committing yourself,--though you women
understand many things from the mere look of a man. However, all
the men whom you employ, even the most insignificant, ought to be
thoroughly satisfactory to you. If you don't like him don't take
him; but if he suits you, my dear child, I beg you to cure him of
his ill-disguised ambition. Make him take to a peaceful, happy,
rural life, where true beneficence is perpetually exercised; where
the capacities of great and strong souls find continual exercise,
and they themselves discover daily fresh sources of admiration in
the works of Nature, and in real ameliorations, real progress, an
occupation worthy of any man.
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