| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: things indiscriminately. I confess that neither the structure of
languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various
states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven
and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward
substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious
soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed
to the metaphysical, or in it highest sense, the physical secrets
of the world.
Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral
relations of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes,
and the actions of men were his theme; and his hope and his dream was
Frankenstein |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: to dance in the dances, then come ye out of the vineyards
and catch you every man a wife from the daughters of
Shiloh"--a touching example apparently of early so-called
'marriage by capture'! Or there were dances, also partly
or originally religious, of a quite orgiastic and Bacchanalian
character, like the Bryallicha performed in Sparta by
men and women in hideous masks, or the Deimalea by
Sileni and Satyrs waltzing in a circle; or the Bibasis
carried out by both men and women--a quite gymnastic
exercise in which the performers took a special pride in striking
their own buttocks with their heels! or others wilder
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: whom he could not bring himself to ask anything.
Just then the Marquis d'Esgrignon looked exactly as any imagination
with a touch of romance could wish. He was almost bald, but a fringe
of silken, white locks, curled at the tips, covered the back of his
head. All the pride of race might be seen in a noble forehead, such as
you may admire in a Louis XV., a Beaumarchais, a Marechal de
Richelieu, it was not the square, broad brow of the portraits of the
Marechal de Saxe; nor yet the small hard circle of Voltaire, compact
to overfulness; it was graciously rounded and finely moulded, the
temples were ivory tinted and soft; and mettle and spirit, unquenched
by age, flashed from the brilliant eyes. The Marquis had the Conde
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