| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: intimates the union of the spiritual and fleshly, the interpenetration of
the moral and intellectual faculties.
The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed;
the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of
Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the
complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the
force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme
idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl,
staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have
been ashamed to make known if he had been sober. The state of his
affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: think, the masterpiece of this unknown Society. In the fourth, and an
Academician! This boy of fourteen, a poet already, the protege of
Madame de Stael, a coming genius, said Father Haugoult, was to be one
of us! a wizard, a youth capable of writing a composition or a
translation while we were being called into lessons, and of learning
his lessons by reading them through but once. Louis Lambert bewildered
all our ideas. And Father Haugoult's curiosity and impatience to see
this new boy added fuel to our excited fancy.
"If he has pigeons, he can have no pigeon-house; there is not room for
another. Well, it cannot be helped," said one boy, since famous as an
agriculturist.
Louis Lambert |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: be the worst man living (which I hope I am not) if I be not a
good husband. I am confident never two humours were better
fitted together than ours are. We cannot stir from hence till
Tuesday, by reason that there is not carts to be had to-morrow to
transport all our GUARDE INFANTAS, without which there is no
stirring: so you are not to expect me till Thursday night at
Hampton Court."
They did not reach the palace until the 29th of May, that being
the king's birthday, and, moreover, the anniversary of his
entrance into London; a date which the Queen's arrival now caused
to be celebrated with triple magnificence and joy. When the
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