| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: anger; he trembled for an instant, sat down, laid his paper on the
chimney-piece, and looked down. In a moment he had recovered his
gentlemanly dignity, and looked steadily at the judge, as if to read
in his countenance the indications of his character.
"How is it, monsieur," he asked, "that I have had no notice of such a
petition?"
"Monsieur le Marquis, persons on whom such a commission is held not
being supposed to have the use of their reason, any notice of the
petition is unnecessary. The duty of the Court chiefly consists in
verifying the allegations of the petitioner."
"Nothing can be fairer," replied the Marquis. "Well, then, monsieur,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other
vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings. The lion is a
gentleman; he will not touch carrion. I am a gentleman, and I
cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt. Sit
still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and do not say a word, or I
shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us.
Here is your health!' said I, and pledged him in the prison beer.
'You have chosen to speak in a certain way of a young child,' I
continued, 'who might be your daughter, and who was giving alms to
me and some others of us mendicants. If the Emperor' - saluting -
'if my Emperor could hear you, he would pluck off the Cross from
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: Cratylus). Yet from diversity of statements and opinions may be obtained a
nearer approach to the truth than is to be gained from any one of them. It
also tends to correct itself, because it is gradually brought nearer to the
common sense of mankind. There are some leading categories or
classifications of thought, which, though unverified, must always remain
the elements from which the science or study of the mind proceeds. For
example, we must assume ideas before we can analyze them, and also a
continuing mind to which they belong; the resolution of it into successive
moments, which would say, with Protagoras, that the man is not the same
person which he was a minute ago, is, as Plato implies in the Theaetetus,
an absurdity.
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