| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: has to do, not with abstractions of the intellect, but with right and
wrong, love and hate, and all which, in the common instincts of men,
involves a free will, a free judgment, a free responsibility and desert?
And that, therefore, if there were a Spirit, a Daemonic Element, an
universal Reason, a Logos, a Divine Element, closely connected with man,
that one Reason, that one Divine Element, must be a person also? At
least, so strong was the instinct of even the Heathen schools in this
direction, that the followers of Plotinus had to fill up the void which
yawned between man and the invisible things after which he yearned, by
reviving the whole old Pagan Polytheism, and adding to it a Daemonology
borrowed partly from the Chaldees, and partly from the Jewish rabbis,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: for to fly from pleasure, is not to avoid pain!
"My uncle realized, by good luck, rather than management, a
handsome fortune; and returning on the wings of love, lost in the
most enchanting reveries, to England, to share it with his mistress
and his friend, he found them--united.
"There were some circumstances, not necessary for me to recite,
which aggravated the guilt of the friend beyond measure, and the
deception, that had been carried on to the last moment, was so
base, it produced the most violent effect on my uncle's health and
spirits. His native country, the world! lately a garden of blooming
sweets, blasted by treachery, seemed changed into a parched desert,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: which they enjoy transfuses this same mildness of temper into the
character of the nation. The political institutions of the
United States constantly bring citizens of all ranks into
contact, and compel them to pursue great undertakings in concert.
People thus engaged have scarcely time to attend to the details
of etiquette, and they are besides too strongly interested in
living harmoniously for them to stick at such things. They
therefore soon acquire a habit of considering the feelings and
opinions of those whom they meet more than their manners, and
they do not allow themselves to be annoyed by trifles.
I have often remarked in the United States that it is not
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