| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: tender pity from this village rector; but, as we have seen already,
the exquisite delicacy which no passion had ever touched gave him the
true maternal spirit for his flock. This /mens devinior/, this
apostolic tenderness, places the priest above all other men and makes
him, in a sense, divine. Madame Graslin had not as yet had enough
experience of Monsieur Bonnet to know this beauty hidden in his soul
like a spring, from which flowed grace and purity and true life.
"Ah! monsieur," she cried, giving herself wholly up to him by a
gesture, a look, such as the dying give.
"I understand you," he said. "What is to be done? What will you
become?"
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: the King's tomb and chapel a triumph and a glory for all time; and
here, d'ye see, I was made knight, not for anything I'd slaved
over, or given my heart and guts to, but expressedly because I'd
saved him thirty pounds and a tongue-lashing from Catherine of
Castille - she that had asked for the ship. That thought shrivelled
me with insides while I was folding away my draft. On the heels
of it - maybe you'll see why - I began to grin to myself. I thought
of the earnest simplicity of the man - the King, I should say -
because I'd saved him the money; his smile as though he'd won
half France! I thought of my own silly pride and foolish expectations
that some day he'd honour me as a master craftsman. I
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: nobleness and self-responsibility almost offends, and awakens
distrust, "the lamb," and still more "the sheep," wins respect.
There is a point of diseased mellowness and effeminacy in the
history of society, at which society itself takes the part of him
who injures it, the part of the CRIMINAL, and does so, in fact,
seriously and honestly. To punish, appears to it to be somehow
unfair--it is certain that the idea of "punishment" and "the
obligation to punish" are then painful and alarming to people.
"Is it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered HARMLESS? Why
should we still punish? Punishment itself is terrible!"--with
these questions gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws
Beyond Good and Evil |
