| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: go down crowded with human beings, but the impetuosity of that flood
of men toward the fatal bank was so furious that a mass of humanity
poured itself violently into the river like an avalanche. Not a cry
was heard; the only sound was like the dropping of monstrous stones
into the water. Then the Beresina was a mass of floating corpses.
The retrograde movement of those who now fell back into the plain to
escape the death before them was so violent, and their concussion
against those who were advancing from the rear so terrible, that
numbers were smothered or trampled to death. The Comte and Comtesse de
Vandieres owed their lives to their carriage, behind which Philippe
forced them, using it as a breastwork. As for the major and the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: order to return, you to your heavenly home, and I to my native land on
earth, must we not obey the voice of God? We must walk on resignedly
in the stony paths where His almighty finger points the way. Do not
you quail at the thought of the danger to which you exposed yourself?
Arriving there without being bidden, and saying, 'Here I am!' before
your time, would you not have been cast back into a world beneath that
where your soul now hovers? Poor outcast cherub! Should you not rather
bless God for having suffered you to live in a sphere where you may
hear none but heavenly harmonies? Are you not as pure as a diamond, as
lovely as a flower?
"Think what it is to know, like me, only the City of Sorrows!--
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: animal world is a rout of appetites, acknowledging no other rein
than impotence. Mankind, alone capable of emerging from the slough
of the instincts, is bringing equity into being, is creating it
slowly as its conception grows clearer. Out of the sacred
rushlight, so flickering as yet, but gaining strength from age to
age, man will make a flaming torch that will put an end, among us,
to the principles of the brutes and, one day, utterly change the
face of society.
CHAPTER XV: THE LABYRINTH SPIDER
While the Epeirae, with their gorgeous net-tapestries, are
incomparable weavers, many other Spiders excel in ingenious devices
The Life of the Spider |
