| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: you allow me time and space, I can, by continuing to cast the letters,
arrive at last at the Eneid combination."
Those foolish persons who deify all rather than admit a God recoil
before the infinite divisibility of matter which is in the nature of
imponderable forces. Locke and Condillac retarded by fifty years the
immense progress which natural science is now making under the great
principle of unity due to Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire. Some intelligent
persons, without any system, convinced by facts conscientiously
studied, still hold to Mesmer's doctrine, which recognizes the
existence of a penetrative influence acting from man to man, put in
motion by the will, curative by the abundance of the fluid, the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: abomination of the worship of her gods. These feuds between the
allied peoples had their root in the horrible rites of human
sacrifice. At some time in the past, from all these cities
captives have been dragged to the altars of the gods of Mexico,
there to be slaughtered and devoured by the cannibal worshippers.
Now these outrages were remembered, now when the arm of the queen
of the valley was withered, the children of those whom she had
slain rose up to slay her and to drag HER children to their altars.
By the month of May, strive as we would, and never was a more
gallant fight made, all our allies were crushed or had deserted us,
and the siege of the city began. It began by land and by water,
Montezuma's Daughter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: known him. I have, and I have defied him. He
feared neither God, nor devil, nor man, nor wind,
nor sea, nor his own conscience. And I believe he
hated everybody and everything. But I think he
was afraid to die. I believe I am the only man
who ever stood up to him. I faced him in that
cabin where you live now, when he was sick, and I
cowed him then. He thought I was going to twist
his neck for him. If he had had his way we would
have been beating up against the Nord-East mon-
soon, as long as he lived and afterward, too, for ages
The Shadow Line |
