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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: "But not in the modern aesthetic sense, I presume? Like the young lady,
in Punch, who begins a conversation with 'Are you intense?'"
"By no means!" replied the Earl.
"What I mean is intensity of thought--a concentrated attention.
We lose half the pleasure we might have in Life, by not really attending.
Take any instance you like: it doesn't matter how trivial the pleasure
may be--the principle is the same. Suppose A and B are reading the same
second-rate circulating-library novel. A never troubles himself to
master the relationships of the characters, on which perhaps all the
interest of the story depends: he 'skips' over all the descriptions of
scenery, and every passage that looks rather dull: he doesn't half attend
Sylvie and Bruno |
