| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: relations, and duties of man, which are, after all, among the most
mysterious, and also among the most sacred objects which man can
contemplate.
It was not wonderful, however, that Neoplatonism took the course it did.
Spirit, they felt rightly, was meant to rule matter; it was to be freed
from matter only for that very purpose. No one could well deny that.
The philosopher, as he rose and became, according to Plotinus, a god, or
at least approached toward the gods, must partake of some mysterious and
transcendental power. No one could well deny that conclusion, granting
the premiss. But of what power? What had he to show as the result of
his intimate communion with an unseen Being? The Christian Schools, who
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: securing him. She hadn't calculated, but she had said "Never!" and
that word had made a bed big enough for his long-legged patience.
He became from this moment to my mind the interesting figure in the
piece.
Now that he had acted without my aid I was free to show him this,
and having on his own side something to show me he repeatedly
knocked at my door. What he brought with him on these occasions
was a simplicity so huge that, as I turn my ear to the past, I seem
even now to hear it bumping up and down my stairs. That was really
what I saw of him in the light of his behaviour. He had fallen in
love as he might have broken his leg, and the fracture was of a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: swimming in the clear mill-pond below the currents of water roaring
over the wheel. As the poet came nearer he heard the clack of the
mill, and saw the good-natured, homely woman of the house knitting on
a garden bench, and keeping an eye upon a little one who was chasing
the hens about.
Lucien came forward. "My good woman," he said, "I am tired out; I have
a fever on me, and I have only three francs; will you undertake to
give me brown bread and milk, and let me sleep in the barn for a week?
I shall have time to write to my people, and they will either come to
fetch me or send me money."
"I am quite willing, always supposing that my husband has no
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