| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: not illumined by the imagination. He sees all the lovely
influences of life as modes of light: the imagination itself is
the world of light. The world is made by it, and yet the world
cannot understand it: that is because the imagination is simply a
manifestation of love, and it is love and the capacity for it that
distinguishes one human being from another.
But it is when he deals with a sinner that Christ is most romantic,
in the sense of most real. The world had always loved the saint as
being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God.
Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always
loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: point to the rest of the body. The bones[10] above the hoof and below
the fetlock must not be too straight, like those of a goat; through
not being properly elastic,[11] legs of this type will jar the rider,
and are more liable to become inflamed. On the other hand, these bones
must not be too low, or else the fetlock will be abraded or lacerated
when the horse is galloped over clods and stones.
[10] i.e. "the pasterns ({mesokunia}) and the coffin should be
'sloping.'"
[11] Or, "being too inflexible." Lit. "giving blow for blow, overuch
like anvil to hammer."
The bones of the shanks[12] ought to be thick, being as they are the
 On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: "Well?"
"Perhaps I only persuaded myself that I had. I had been
reading William James on religious experiences and I was
thinking very much of Conversion. I tried to experience
Conversion. . . ."
"Yes? "
"It faded."
"It always fades," said Sir Richmond with anger in his voice.
"I wonder how many people there are nowadays who have passed
through this last experience of ineffectual invocation, this
appeal to the fading shadow of a vanished God. In the night.
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