| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: forms and perceptions, and thus created another kind of animal. These are
the trees and plants and seeds which have been improved by cultivation and
are now domesticated among us; anciently there were only the wild kinds,
which are older than the cultivated. For everything that partakes of life
may be truly called a living being, and the animal of which we are now
speaking partakes of the third kind of soul, which is said to be seated
between the midriff and the navel, having no part in opinion or reason or
mind, but only in feelings of pleasure and pain and the desires which
accompany them. For this nature is always in a passive state, revolving in
and about itself, repelling the motion from without and using its own, and
accordingly is not endowed by nature with the power of observing or
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: friends; I bowed to them with a look that belonged to you, like
all that is of me. The very color of the gloves, moulded to hands
of a gentleman, your step along the nave,--all, all, is so printed
on my memory that sixty years hence I shall see the veriest
trifles of this day of days,--the color of the atmosphere, the ray
of sunshine that flickered on a certain pillar; I shall hear the
prayer your step interrupted; I shall inhale the incense of the
altar; forever I shall feel above our heads the priestly hands
that blessed us both as you passed by me at the closing
benediction. The good Abbe Marcelin married us then! The
happiness, above that of earth, which I feel in this new world of
Modeste Mignon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: should go ahead, and the youngest, seating himself sideways with
a dashing air, swung his long knout and shouted to the horses.
The troyka-bells tinkled and the sledge-runners squeaked over the
snow.
The sledge swayed hardly at all. The shaft-horse, with his
tightly bound tail under his decorated breechband, galloped
smoothly and briskly; the smooth road seemed to run rapidly
backwards, while the driver dashingly shook the reins. One of
the lawyers and the officer sitting opposite talked nonsense to
Makovkina's neighbour, but Makovkina herself sat motionless and
in thought, tightly wrapped in her fur. 'Always the same and
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