| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "What you say, good neighbour, is certainly true, and my plan is
Always to think of improvement, provided tho' new, 'tis not costly.
But what avails it in truth, unless one has plenty of money,
Active and fussy to he, improving both inside and outside?
Sadly confined are the means of a burgher; e'en when he knows it,
Little that's good he is able to do, his purse is too narrow,
And the sum wanted too great; and so he is always prevented.
I have had plenty of schemes! but then I was terribly frighten'd
At the expense, especially during a time of such danger.
Long had my house smiled upon me, decked out in modish exterior,
Long had my windows with large panes of glass resplendently glitterd.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: And would you not allow that all just things are honourable in
so far as they are just? Please to reflect, and tell me your opinion.
POLUS: Yes, Socrates, I think that they are.
SOCRATES: Consider again:--Where there is an agent, must there not also be
a patient?
POLUS: I should say so.
SOCRATES: And will not the patient suffer that which the agent does, and
will not the suffering have the quality of the action? I mean, for
example, that if a man strikes, there must be something which is stricken?
POLUS: Yes.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: At last she reappeared, bearing one of those stout linen bags which,
from time immemorial, have been used in Touraine to carry or bring, to
and from market, nuts, fruits, or wheat. The bag was half full of
flour. The housekeeper opened it and showed it to the king, on whom
she cast the rapid, savage look with which old maids appear to squirt
venom upon men.
"It costs six sous the 'septeree,'" she said.
"What does that matter?" said the king. "Spread it on the floor; but
be careful to make an even layer of it--as if it had fallen like
snow."
The old maid did not comprehend. This proposal astonished her as
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