| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: it is always above or below the conventional lines of what fools call
the /beau-ideal/. What power is it that destroys them? Passion. Every
passion in Paris resolves into two terms: gold and pleasure. Now, do
you not breathe again? Do you not feel air and space purified? Here is
neither labor nor suffering. The soaring arch of gold has reached the
summit. From the lowest gutters, where its stream commences, from the
little shops where it is stopped by puny coffer-dams, from the heart
of the counting-houses and great workshops, where its volume is that
of ingots--gold, in the shape of dowries and inheritances, guided by
the hands of young girls or the bony fingers of age, courses towards
the aristocracy, where it will become a blazing, expansive stream.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'I am never ridiculous,' he said; 'it is my only merit; and you may
be certain this shall be a scene of marriage A LA MODE. But when I
remember the beginning, it is bare courtesy to speak in sorrow. Be
just, madam: you would think me strangely uncivil to recall these
days without the decency of a regret. Be yet a little juster, and
own, if only in complaisance, that you yourself regret that past.'
'I have nothing to regret,' said the Princess. 'You surprise me. I
thought you were so happy.'
'Happy and happy, there are so many hundred ways,' said Otto. 'A
man may be happy in revolt; he may be happy in sleep; wine, change,
and travel make him happy; virtue, they say, will do the like - I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: the ruin, or overturn of any of them, but to pray for the king, and safety
of our nation. and good of all men - That we may live a peaceable and
quiet life, in all godliness and honesty; UNDER THE GOVERNMENT WHICH GOD
IS PLEASED TO SET OVER US" - If these are REALLY your principles why
do ye not abide by them? Why do ye not leave that, which ye call
God's Work, to be managed by himself? These very principles instruct
you to wait with patience and humility, for the event of all public measures,
and to receive that event as the divine will towards you. Wherefore,
what occasion is there for your POLITICAL TESTIMONY if you fully believe
what it contains? And the very publishing it proves, that either,
ye do not believe what ye profess, or have not virtue enough to practise
Common Sense |
