| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: "How glad I am to see you, my dear Maksim
Maksimych! Well, how are you?" said
Pechorin.
"And . . . thou . . . you?"[1] murmured
the old man, with tears in his eyes. "What an
age it is since I have seen you! . . . But where
are you off to?" . . .
[1] "Thou" is the form of address used in speaking to
an intimate friend, etc. Pechorin had used the more formal
"you."
"I am going to Persia -- and farther." . . .
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: bridge the gulf between them. Many perplexities are avoided by keeping
them apart. There might certainly be a new science of logic; it would not
however be built up out of the fragments of the old, but would be distinct
from them--relative to the state of knowledge which exists at the present
time, and based chiefly on the methods of Modern Inductive philosophy.
Such a science might have two legitimate fields: first, the refutation and
explanation of false philosophies still hovering in the air as they appear
from the point of view of later experience or are comprehended in the
history of the human mind, as in a larger horizon: secondly, it might
furnish new forms of thought more adequate to the expression of all the
diversities and oppositions of knowledge which have grown up in these
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: transpose the monomania into the key of high passion; and,
furthermore, let the seeker be a man of ardent temper, with a
lion's heart and a leonine head and mane, a man to inspire awe
and fear in those who come in contact with him--realise this, and
you may, perhaps, understand why the General walked abruptly out
of the church when the first notes of a ballad, which he used to
hear with a rapture of delight in a gilt-panelled boudoir, began
to vibrate along the aisles of the church in the sea.
The General walked away down the steep street which led to the
port, and only stopped when he could not hear the deep notes of
the organ. Unable to think of anything but the love which broke
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