| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: will become of me now? Oh, if you'll only come back you can
have all the money--half of it. Oh, give me back my money.
Give me back my money, and I'll forgive you. You can leave
me then if you want to. Oh, my money. Mac, Mac, you've
gone for good. You don't love me any more, and now I'm a
beggar. My money's gone, my husband's gone, gone, gone,
gone!"
Her grief was terrible. She dug her nails into her scalp,
and clutching the heavy coils of her thick black hair tore
it again and again. She struck her forehead with her
clenched fists. Her little body shook from head to foot with
McTeague |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: came up to my private office.
" 'Be quick and come, M. Derville,' said he, 'the governor is just
going to hand in his checks; he has grown as yellow as a lemon; he is
fidgeting to speak with you; death has fair hold of him; the rattle is
working in his throat.'
"When I entered Gobseck's room, I found the dying man kneeling before
the grate. If there was no fire on the hearth, there was at any rate a
monstrous heap of ashes. He had dragged himself out of bed, but his
strength had failed him, and he could neither go back nor find the
voice to complain.
" 'You felt cold, old friend,' I said, as I helped him back to his
Gobseck |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: constructions by another, philosophy will always have much to do.
It would be strange if I disputed this, when these very lectures
which I am giving are (as you will see more clearly from now
onwards) a laborious attempt to extract from the privacies of
religious experience some general facts which can be defined in
formulas upon which everybody may agree.
[288] Compare Professor W. Wallace's Gifford Lectures, in
Lectures and Essays, Oxford, 1898, pp. 17 ff.
Religious experience, in other words, spontaneously and
inevitably engenders myths, superstitions, dogmas, creeds, and
metaphysical theologies, and criticisms of one set of these by
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