| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: that the narrator's sway was absolute. It was a curious scene. The
immense influence that poetry exerts over every mind was plainly to be
seen. For is not the peasant who demands that the tale of wonder
should be simple, and that the impossible should be well-nigh
credible, a lover of poetry of the purest kind?
"She did not like the look of the house at all," the peasant was
saying as the two newcomers took their places where they could
overhear him; "but the poor little hunchback was so tired out with
carrying her bundle of hemp to market, that she went in; besides, the
night had come, and she could go no further. She only asked to be
allowed to sleep there, and ate nothing but a crust of bread that she
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: company, and strolled along the platform, making each person and event
play its part in an extempore drama for my especial benefit.
"What, is the Earl tired of you already?" I said, as the children ran
past me.
"No!" Sylvie replied with great emphasis. "He wants the evening-paper.
So Bruno's going to be a little news-boy!"
"Mind you charge a good price for it!" I called after them.
Returning up the platform, I came upon Sylvie alone.
"Well, child," I said, "where's your little news-boy?
Couldn't he get you an evening-paper?"
"He went to get one at the book-stall at the other side," said Sylvie;
Sylvie and Bruno |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: more violently with the pains of medicine and gymnastic; then again more
gently; now threatening, now admonishing the desires, passions, fears, as
if talking to a thing which is not herself, as Homer in the Odyssee
represents Odysseus doing in the words--
'He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart:
Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured!'
Do you think that Homer wrote this under the idea that the soul is a
harmony capable of being led by the affections of the body, and not rather
of a nature which should lead and master them--herself a far diviner thing
than any harmony?
Yes, Socrates, I quite think so.
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