| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: replaced, and do not therefore call for more than a passing mention;
but it is a serious matter when Nature produces such a wicked old
biblioclast as John Bagford, one of the founders of the Society
of Antiquaries, who, in the beginning of the last century, went about
the country, from library to library, tearing away title pages from rare
books of all sizes. These he sorted out into nationalities and towns,
and so, with a lot of hand-bills, manuscript notes, and miscellaneous
collections of all kinds, formed over a hundred folio volumes,
now preserved in the British Museum. That they are of service as
materials in compiling a general history of printing cannot be denied,
but the destruction of many rare books was the result, and more than
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: different from the one will be of a different kind.
Certainly.
And are not things of a different kind also other in kind?
Of course.
And are not things other in kind unlike?
They are unlike.
And if they are unlike the one, that which they are unlike will clearly be
unlike them?
Clearly so.
Then the one will have unlikeness in respect of which the others are unlike
it?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: know why, but it was there. I gave him a little money and sent
him away, and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for
breath. His presence seemed to chill one's blood."
"Isn't this all just a little fanciful, Villiers? I
suppose the poor fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in
plain English, gone to the bad."
"Well, listen to this." Villiers told Clarke the story
he had heard from Austin.
"You see," he concluded, "there can be but little doubt
that this Mr. Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he
saw something so awful, so terrible, that it cut short his life.
The Great God Pan |
