| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: cases is of no little weight. For example: A man may, by the
influence of an over-ruling planet, be disposed or inclined to
lust, rage, or avarice, and yet by the force of reason overcome
that bad influence; and this was the case of Socrates: But as the
great events of the world usually depend upon numbers of men, it
cannot be expected they should all unite to cross their
inclinations, from pursuing a general design, wherein they
unanimously agree. Besides the influence of the stars reaches to
many actions and events which are not any way in the power of
reason; as sickness, death, and what we commonly call accidents,
with many more, needless to repeat.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: religious philosophy.
[225] Above, pp. 321-327
Lectures XVI and XVII
MYSTICISM
Over and over again in these lectures I have raised points and
left them open and unfinished until we should have come to the
subject of Mysticism. Some of you, I fear, may have smiled as
you noted my reiterated postponements. But now the hour has come
when mysticism must be faced in good earnest, and those broken
threads wound up together. One may say truly, I think, that
personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: which I knew from experience would take a very long time. When
he had gone I gave Umslopogaas a jobation and told him that I
was ashamed of his behaviour.
'Ah, well, Macumazahn,' he said, 'you must be gentle with me,
for here is not my place. I am weary of it, weary to death of
eating and drinking, of sleeping and giving in marriage. I love
not this soft life in stone houses that takes the heart out of
a man, and turns his strength to water and his flesh to fat.
I love not the white robes and the delicate women, the blowing
of trumpets and the flying of hawks. When we fought the Masai
at the kraal yonder, ah, then life was worth the living, but
Allan Quatermain |
