| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: history presents a complete characterization of Ferdinand
and Molly Brandeis.
Ten years before, Ferdinand Brandeis had bought a large bill
of Christmas fancy-goods--celluloid toilette sets, leather
collar boxes, velvet glove cases. Among the lot was a
photograph album in the shape of a huge acorn done in
lightning-struck plush. It was a hideous thing, and
expensive. It stood on a brass stand, and its leaves were
edged in gilt, and its color was a nauseous green and blue,
and it was altogether the sort of thing to grace the chill
and funereal best room in a Wisconsin farmhouse. Ferdinand
Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: construction of harbours, whether they understand the business in hand, or
only think that they do. Whatever the city, in a word, does to another
city, or in the management of her own affairs, all happens by the counsel
of the orators.
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: But now see what follows, if I can (make it clear to you).
(Some words appear to have dropped out here.) You would distinguish the
wise from the foolish?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: The many are foolish, the few wise?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: misunderstood, so long as one seeks a "morbidness" in the
constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and
growths, or even an innate "hell" in them--as almost all
moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem that there is a
hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists?
And that the "tropical man" must be discredited at all costs,
whether as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own
hell and self-torture? And why? In favour of the "temperate
zones"? In favour of the temperate men? The "moral"? The
mediocre?--This for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity."
198. All the systems of morals which address themselves with a
Beyond Good and Evil |
