| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: gifted with some special faculty,--a whimsical or sparkling gaiety
perhaps, an utter malignity, or an almost sublime goodness. Like
instruments which the hand of art can never fully waken, these beings,
highly privileged though they know it not, live within themselves, as
Butscha lived, provided their natural forces so magnificently
concentrated have not been spent in the struggle they have been forced
to maintain, against tremendous odds, to keep alive. This explains
many superstitions, the popular legends of gnomes, frightful dwarfs,
deformed fairies,--all that race of bottles, as Rabelais called them,
containing elixirs and precious balms.
Butscha, therefore, had very nearly found the key to the puzzle. With
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: tale which comes first in these /Etudes/, I adopted the title invented
by Lambert for a work of fiction, and gave the name of a woman who was
dear to him to a girl characterized by her self-devotion; but this is
not all I have borrowed from him: his character and occupations were
of great value to me in writing that book, and the subject arose from
some reminiscences of our youthful meditations. This present volume is
intended as a modest monument, a broken column, to commemorate the
life of the man who bequeathed to me all he had to leave--his
thoughts.
In that boyish effort Lambert had enshrined the ideas of a man. Ten
years later, when I met some learned men who were devoting serious
Louis Lambert |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The United States Bill of Rights: but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath
or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched,
and the persons or things to be seized.
V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime,
unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising
in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service
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