| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: prejudices; for, after all, he was not as powerful as the
executioner, but he evaded social laws with the wit and grace so
well rendered in the scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in fact,
Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Mathurin's
Melmoth--great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest men of
genius in Europe, to which Mozart's harmonies, perhaps, do no
more justice than Rossini's lyre. Terrible allegorical figures
that shall endure as long as the principle of evil existing in
the heart of man shall produce a few copies from century to
century. Sometimes the type becomes half-human when incarnate as
a Mirabeau, sometimes it is an inarticulate force in a Bonaparte,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: and the female problems of our age have taken their rise largely in the
same rapid material changes which during the last centuries, and more
especially the last ninety years, have altered the face of the human world.
Both men and women have been robbed by those changes of their ancient
remunerative fields of social work: here the resemblance stops. The male,
from whom the changes of modern civilisation have taken his ancient field
of labour, has but one choice before him: he must find new fields of
labour, or he must perish. Society will not ultimately support him in an
absolutely quiescent and almost useless condition. If he does not
vigorously exert himself in some direction or other (the direction may even
be predatory) he must ultimately be annihilated. Individual drones, both
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: damp, walks round the engine, and as he does so the brilliant
light of the two engine lamps dazzles his eyes for an instant
and makes the night even blacker to him; he goes to the station.
The platform and steps of the station are wet. Here and there are
white patches of freshly fallen melting snow. In the station
itself it is light and as hot as a steam-bath. There is a smell
of paraffin. Except for the weighing-machine and a yellow seat on
which a man wearing a guard's uniform is asleep, there is no
furniture in the place at all. On the left are two wide-open
doors. Through one of them the telegraphic apparatus and a lamp
with a green shade on it can be seen; through the other, a small
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
