| 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: My gaze could now on no fair view repose,
in mournful veil conceal'd, the world seem'd dead;
The clouds soon closed around me, as a tomb,
And I was left alone in twilight gloom.
At once the sun his lustre seem'd to pour,
And through the mist was seen a radiant light;
Here sank it gently to the ground once more,
There parted it, and climb'd o'er wood and height.
How did I yearn to greet him as of yore,
After the darkness waxing doubly bright!
The airy conflict ofttimes was renew'd,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: one which is afterwards added to the number of terms, one contact is added
to the contacts.
True.
Whatever is the whole number of things, the contacts will be always one
less.
True.
But if there be only one, and not two, there will be no contact?
How can there be?
And do we not say that the others being other than the one are not one and
have no part in the one?
True.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: of meeting here below with a woman who answered to that delightful
vision which all men of intellect dream of and cherish; perhaps his
heart was too sensitive, too delicate, to yield itself to a woman of
society; perhaps he thought best to let nature have her way, and keep
his illusions by cultivating his ideal; perhaps he had laid aside love
as being incompatible with his work and the regularity of a monastic
life which love would have wholly upset.
For several months past d'Arthez had been subjected to the jests and
satire of Blondet and Rastignac, who reproached him with knowing
neither the world nor women. According to them, his authorship was
sufficiently advanced, and his works numerous enough, to allow him a
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