| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: which, by the same means, distributing the animal spirits through the
muscles, can cause the members of such a body to move in as many different
ways, and in a manner as suited, whether to the objects that are presented
to its senses or to its internal affections, as can take place in our own
case apart from the guidance of the will. Nor will this appear at all
strange to those who are acquainted with the variety of movements
performed by the different automata, or moving machines fabricated by
human industry, and that with help of but few pieces compared with the
great multitude of bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, and other
parts that are found in the body of each animal. Such persons will look
upon this body as a machine made by the hands of God, which is
Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: the task before me--the task now so imminent--I felt a little
hipped. In good faith, it was not a gentleman's work that I was
come to do, look at it how you might.
But beggars must not be choosers, and I knew that this feeling
would not last. At the inn, in the presence of others, under the
spur of necessity, or in the excitement of the chase, were that
once begun, I should lose the feeling. When a man is young he
seeks solitude, when he is middle-aged, he flies it and his
thoughts. I made therefore for the 'Green Pillar,' a little inn
in the village street, to which I had been directed at Auch, and,
thundering on the door with the knob of my riding switch, railed
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: honours HIMSELF in them, and in the rights which he concedes to
them, he has no doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as
the ESSENCE of all intercourse, belongs also to the natural
condition of things. The noble soul gives as he takes, prompted
by the passionate and sensitive instinct of requital, which is at
the root of his nature. The notion of "favour" has, INTER PARES,
neither significance nor good repute; there may be a sublime way
of letting gifts as it were light upon one from above, and of
drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those arts and
displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His egoism hinders him
here: in general, he looks "aloft" unwillingly--he looks either
Beyond Good and Evil |
