| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: whose incomprehensible language has become his, is the breeze and the
sun-ray to him; in his eyes her feet are diamonds and her brow is
strewn with stars; she walks environed with a white and luminous
atmosphere; her voice is accompanied by music; she has the gift of
rendering herself invisible. If you ask to see her, he will tell you
she has gone to the ASTRAL REGIONS. It is difficult to believe such a
story, is it not? You know all miracles bear more or less resemblance
to the story of the Golden Tooth. We have our golden tooth in Jarvis,
that is all. Duncker the fisherman asserts that he has seen her plunge
into the fiord and come up in the shape of an eider-duck, at other
times walking on the billows of a storm. Fergus, who leads the flocks
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: less to my credit than they really are; for although I am not immoderately
desirous of glory, or even, if I may venture so to say, although I am
averse from it in so far as I deem it hostile to repose which I hold in
greater account than aught else, yet, at the same time, I have never
sought to conceal my actions as if they were crimes, nor made use of many
precautions that I might remain unknown; and this partly because I should
have thought such a course of conduct a wrong against myself, and partly
because it would have occasioned me some sort of uneasiness which would
again have been contrary to the perfect mental tranquillity which I court.
And forasmuch as, while thus indifferent to the thought alike of fame or
of forgetfulness, I have yet been unable to prevent myself from acquiring
Reason Discourse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: it be against the command of the Church, or the rules of monastic
orders: for no commandment of the Church, no law of an order can
make fasting, watching and labor of more value than it has in
serving to repress or to kill the flesh and its lusts. Where men
go beyond this, and the fasting, eating, sleeping, watching are
practised beyond the strength of the body, and more than is
necessary to the killing of the lust, so that through it the
natural strength is ruined and the head is racked; then let no
one imagine that he has done good works, or excuse himself by
citing the commandment of the Church or the law of his order. He
will be regarded as a man who takes no care of himself, and, as
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