| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: defending what he believed to be vital truth is none the less to
be respected. He had the acuteness to see that Lessing's
refutation of deism did not make him a Christian, while the new
views proposed as a substitute for those of Reimarus were such as
Goetze and his age could in no wise comprehend.
Lessing's own views of dogmatic religion are to be found in his
work entitled, "The Education of the Human Race." These views
have since so far become the veriest commonplaces of criticism,
that one can hardly realize that, only ninety years ago, they
should have been regarded as dangerous paradoxes. They may be
summed up in the statement that all great religions are good in
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: are dishonourable is not a simple question; they are honourable to him who
follows them honourably, dishonourable to him who follows them
dishonourably. There is dishonour in yielding to the evil, or in an evil
manner; but there is honour in yielding to the good, or in an honourable
manner. Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul,
inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in
itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was
desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words
and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for
it becomes one with the everlasting. The custom of our country would have
both of them proven well and truly, and would have us yield to the one sort
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: for your coming: Mr. Johnson leaves London next Tuesday; he is going for
his health to Bath, where, if the waters are favourable to his constitution
and my wishes, he will be laid up with the gout many weeks. During his
absence we shall be able to chuse our own society, and to have true
enjoyment. I would ask you to Edward Street, but that once he forced from
me a kind of promise never to invite you to my house; nothing but my being
in the utmost distress for money should have extorted it from me. I can get
you, however, a nice drawing-room apartment in Upper Seymour Street, and we
may be always together there or here; for I consider my promise to Mr.
Johnson as comprehending only (at least in his absence) your not sleeping
in the house. Poor Mainwaring gives me such histories of his wife's
Lady Susan |
