| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: which the events of the morning had plunged us. Admire for a long time
some pretty dove with iridescent colors, perched on a swaying branch
above a spring, and you will give a cry of pain when you see a hawk
swooping down upon her, driving its steel claws into her breast, and
bearing her away with murderous rapidity. When we had advanced a step
or two into an open space which lay before what seemed to be a grotto,
a sort of esplanade placed a hundred feet above the ocean, and
protected from its fury by buttresses of rock, we suddenly experienced
an electrical shudder, something resembling the shock of a sudden
noise awaking us in the dead of night.
We saw, sitting on a vast granite boulder, a man who looked at us. His
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: sore to the quick. You are worn out, aren't you? Well, then; in the
heyday of youth, under the pressure of penury, what have you done? You
are not in the front rank, and you have not a thousand francs of your
own. That is the sum-total of the situation. Can you, in the decline
of your powers, support a family by your pen, when your wife, if she
is an honest woman, will not have at her command the resources of the
woman of the streets, who can extract her thousand-franc note from the
depths where milord keeps it safe? You are rushing into the lowest
depths of the social theatre.
"And this is only the financial side. Now, consider the political
position. We are struggling in an essentially /bourgeois/ age, in
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: ever appeared to me to be a short-lived monster. The vices of
rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring
about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and
of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon return to
stretch itself at the feet of a single master.
[Footnote b: See Appendix Z.]
Chapter VII: Continuation Of The Preceding Chapters
I believe that it is easier to establish an absolute and
despotic government amongst a people in which the conditions of
society are equal, than amongst any other; and I think that if
such a government were once established amongst such a people, it
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