| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: feebler are no doubt borne upward by the waves of this ocean of faith
and love. Prayer, a power electrical, draws our nature above itself.
This involuntary union of all wills, equally prostrate on the earth,
equally risen into heaven, contains, no doubt, the secret of the magic
influences wielded by the chants of the priests, the harmonies of the
organ, the perfumes and the pomps of the altar, the voices of the
crowd and its silent contemplations. Consequently, we need not be
surprised to see in the middle-ages so many tender passions begun in
churches after long ecstasies,--passions ending often in little
sanctity, and for which women, as usual, were the ones to do penance.
Religious sentiment certainly had, in those days, an affinity with
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: clouds, which might be seen anywhere by the eye of faith. It was a subject
especially congenial to the ponderous industry of certain French and
Swedish writers, who delighted in heaping up learning of all sorts but were
incapable of using it.
M. Martin has written a valuable dissertation on the opinions entertained
respecting the Island of Atlantis in ancient and modern times. It is a
curious chapter in the history of the human mind. The tale of Atlantis is
the fabric of a vision, but it has never ceased to interest mankind. It
was variously regarded by the ancients themselves. The stronger heads
among them, like Strabo and Longinus, were as little disposed to believe in
the truth of it as the modern reader in Gulliver or Robinson Crusoe. On
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: one of the spots haunted by goblins in former times. The twilight
had begun to whiten what was on high and to blacken all below.
As he read, over the top of the book which he held in his hand,
Father Mabeuf was surveying his plants, and among others
a magnificent rhododendron which was one of his consolations;
four days of heat, wind, and sun without a drop of rain, had passed;
the stalks were bending, the buds drooping, the leaves falling;
all this needed water, the rhododendron was particularly sad.
Father Mabeuf was one of those persons for whom plants have souls.
The old man had toiled all day over his indigo plot, he was worn out
with fatigue, but he rose, laid his books on the bench, and walked,
Les Miserables |
