| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: accordance of souls, the imprint of a noble ideal (such as God
does permit us to form in this low world) upon the trivial round
of daily life whose habits we must needs obey, a constancy of
heart more precious far than what we call fidelity. Can we say
that we make sacrifices when the end in view is our eternal good,
the dream of poets, the dream of maidens, the poem which, at the
entrance of life when thought essays its wings, each noble
intellect has pondered and caressed only to see it shivered to
fragments on some stone of stumbling as hard as it is vulgar?--for
to the great majority of men, the foot of reality steps instantly
on that mysterious egg so seldom hatched.
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare: T' avert your liking a more worthier way
Than on a wretch whom nature is asham'd
Almost t' acknowledge hers.
France. This is most strange,
That she that even but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,
Most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle
So many folds of favour. Sure her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it, or your fore-vouch'd affection
King Lear |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: in half a year, others in half a lifetime, according to the speed
and strength with which they digest and "change their material."
Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even
in our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century ere
they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and
soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say,
to "good Europeanism." And while digressing on this possibility,
I happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two
old patriots--they were evidently both hard of hearing and
consequently spoke all the louder. "HE has as much, and knows as
much, philosophy as a peasant or a corps-student," said the one--
Beyond Good and Evil |
