| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: crossing its limits. For must there not be some extraordinary
circumstances to exalt the name of a professor from the history
of Science to the general history of the human race? Had Desplein
that universal command of knowledge which makes a man the living
word, the great figure of his age? Desplein had a godlike eye; he
saw into the sufferer and his malady by an intuition, natural or
acquired, which enabled him to grasp the diagnostics peculiar to
the individual, to determine the very time, the hour, the minute
when an operation should be performed, making due allowance for
atmospheric conditions and peculiarities of individual
temperament. To proceed thus, hand in hand with nature, had he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
there is doubt about some of these) is:
Work Number of books
The Anabasis 7
Anabasis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: magical celerity. Say it happened to be STIRRUP. 'No, I don't
seem to remember that word, Mr. Anne,' he would say: 'it don't seem
to stick to me, that word don't.' And then, when I had told it him
again, 'ETRIER!' he would cry. 'To be sure! I had it on the tip
of my tongue. ETERIER!' (going wrong already, as if by a fatal
instinct). 'What will I remember it by, now? Why, INTERIOR, to be
sure! I'll remember it by its being something that ain't in the
interior of a horse.' And when next I had occasion to ask him the
French for stirrup, it was a toss-up whether he had forgotten all
about it, or gave me EXTERIOR for an answer. He was never a hair
discouraged. He seemed to consider that he was covering the ground
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