| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: user. The children, like the children of Plato's perfect city,
will grow up 'in a simple atmosphere of all fair things' - I quote
from the passage in the REPUBLIC - 'a simple atmosphere of all fair
things, where beauty, which is the spirit of art, will come on eye
and ear like a fresh breath of wind that brings health from a clear
upland, and insensibly and gradually draw the child's soul into
harmony with all knowledge and all wisdom, so that he will love
what is beautiful and good, and hate what is evil and ugly (for
they always go together) long before he knows the reason why; and
then when reason comes will kiss her on the cheek as a friend.'
That is what Plato thought decorative art could do for a nation,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: suicidal of his glory. On his tomb there is no proclaiming statue
to repeat to posterity the mysteries which genius seeks out at
its own cost.
But perhaps Desplein's genius was answerable for his beliefs, and
for that reason mortal. To him the terrestrial atmosphere was a
generative envelope; he saw the earth as an egg within its shell;
and not being able to determine whether the egg or the hen first
was, he would not recognize either the cock or the egg. He
believed neither in the antecedent animal nor the surviving
spirit of man. Desplein had no doubts; he was positive. His bold
and unqualified atheism was like that of many scientific men, the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow
faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of
sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool's
allowance.
There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a
Frenchman, discovered "actinism," that power in the sun's rays
which produces a chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone
structures, and statues of metal "are all alike destructively
acted upon during the hours of sunshine, and, but for provisions
of Nature no less wonderful, would soon perish under the delicate
touch of the most subtle of the agencies of the universe." But he
Walking |
