| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: active growth;--side by side with them, fostered by them, though
generally in strong opposition to them, whether conscious or
unconscious. We must beware, however, of trying to find between
that decay and that growth a bond of cause and effect where there is
really none. The general decay may have determined the course of
many men's thoughts; but it no more set them thinking than (as I
have heard said) the decay of the Ancien Regime produced the new
Regime--a loose metaphor, which, like all metaphors, will not hold
water, and must not be taken for a philosophic truth. That would be
to confess man--what I shall never confess him to be--the creature
of circumstances; it would be to fall into the same fallacy of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: That can recover him.
[To Philemon.]
Give this to the 'pothecary,
And tell me how it works.
[Exeunt all but Cerimon.]
[Enter two Gentlemen.]
FIRST GENTLEMAN.
Good morrow.
SECOND GENTLEMAN.
Good morrow to your lordship.
CERIMON.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: he was virtually son-in-law to the Vervelle family. The three
Vervelles bloomed out in this studio, which they were now accustomed
to consider as one of their residences; there was to them an
inexplicable attraction in this clean, neat, pretty, and artistic
abode. Abyssus abyssum, the commonplace attracts the commonplace.
Toward the end of the sitting the stairway shook, the door was
violently thrust open by Joseph Bridau; he came like a whirlwind, his
hair flying. He showed his grand haggard face as he looked about him,
casting everywhere the lightning of his glance; then he walked round
the whole studio, and returned abruptly to Grassou, pulling his coat
together over the gastric region, and endeavouring, but in vain, to
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