| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: pleasures. People are nowadays so fond of resisting temptations;
here is one to be resisted. They are fond of self-denial; here is
a propensity that cannot be too peremptorily denied. There is an
idea abroad among moral people that they should make their
neighbours good. One person I have to make good: myself. But my
duty to my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying that I
have to make him happy - if I may.
III
Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in
the relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less
proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands;
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: standing on the shore at low tide, has one longed to walk on and in
under the waves, as the water-ousel does in the pools of the
mountain burn, and see it all but for a moment; and a solemn beauty
and meaning has invested the old Greek fable of Glaucus the
fisherman: how eating of the herb which gave his fish strength to
leap back into their native element, he was seized on the spot with
a strange longing to follow them under the waves, and became for
ever a companion of the fair semi-human forms with which the
Hellenic poets peopled their sunny bays and firths, feeding "silent
flocks" far below on the green Zostera beds, or basking with them
on the sunny ledges in the summer noon, or wandering in the still
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: GLOUCESTER.
What! am I dared and bearded to my face?
Draw, men, for all this privileged place;
Blue coats to tawny coats. Priest, beware your beard;
I mean to tug it and to cuff you soundly:
Under my feet I stamp thy cardinal's hat:
In spite of pope or dignities of church,
Here by the cheeks I 'll drag thee up and down.
WINCHESTER.
Gloucester, thou wilt answer this before the
pope.
|
