| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: one 'punctual spot' of knowledge. A rank unhealthy soil
breeds a harvest of prejudices. Feeling himself above others
in his one little branch - in the classification of
toadstools, or Carthaginian history - he waxes great in his
own eyes and looks down on others. Having all his sympathies
educated in one way, they die out in every other; and he is
apt to remain a peevish, narrow, and intolerant bigot.
Dilettante is now a term of reproach; but there is a certain
form of dilettantism to which no one can object. It is this
that we want among our students. We wish them to abandon no
subject until they have seen and felt its merit - to act
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: In the back part was Hilary's grave, while in the front was a
niche for sleeping, with a straw mattress, a small table, and a
shelf with icons and books. Outside the outer door, which
fastened with a hook, was another shelf on which, once a day, a
monk placed food from the monastery.
And so Sergius became a hermit.
III
At Carnival time, in the sixth year of Sergius's life at the
hermitage, a merry company of rich people, men and women from a
neighbouring town, made up a troyka-party, after a meal of
carnival-pancakes and wine. The company consisted of two
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: "Oh! my child! my child!" she cried, sobbing, and covering him with
kisses in a sort of frenzy.
"Madame!" said an unknown man.
"Ah! it is not he!" she cried, recoiling in terror, and standing erect
before the recruit, at whom she gazed with a haggard eye.
"Holy Father! what a likeness!" said Brigitte.
There was silence for a moment. The recruit himself shuddered at the
aspect of Madame de Dey.
"Ah! monsieur," she said, leaning on Brigitte's husband, who had
entered the room, and feeling to its fullest extent an agony the fear
of which had already nearly killed her. "Monsieur, I cannot stay with
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