| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: danced round the Tree of Liberty of the Revolution, and finally
almost fell down in adoration before Napoleon. But how rapidly
does THIS very sentiment now pale, how difficult nowadays is even
the APPREHENSION of this sentiment, how strangely does the
language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, and Byron sound to our
ear, in whom COLLECTIVELY the same fate of Europe was able to
SPEAK, which knew how to SING in Beethoven!--Whatever German
music came afterwards, belongs to Romanticism, that is to say, to
a movement which, historically considered, was still shorter,
more fleeting, and more superficial than that great interlude,
the transition of Europe from Rousseau to Napoleon, and to the
Beyond Good and Evil |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: Christianity. The writer of St. John's gospel appears still to be
thinking with a considerable freedom, but Origen is already
hopelessly in the net of the texts. The writer of St. John's gospel
was a free man, but Origen was a superstitious man. He was
emasculated mentally as well as bodily through his bibliolatry. He
quotes; his predecessor thinks.
But the writer throws out these guesses at the probable intentions
of early Christian thought in passing. His business here is the
definition of a position. The writer's position here in this book
is, firstly, complete Agnosticism in the matter of God the Creator,
and secondly, entire faith in the matter of God the Redeemer. That,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: colonel, long without tidings of these cherished darlings, was sent,
at the peace of 1814, across Russia and Prussia on foot, accompanied
by the lieutenant. No difference of epaulets could count between the
two friends, who reached Frankfort just as Napoleon was disembarking
at Cannes.
Charles found his wife in Frankfort, in mourning for her father, who
had always idolized her and tried to keep a smile upon her lips, even
by his dying bed. Old Wallenrod was unable to survive the disasters of
the Empire. At seventy years of age he speculated in cottons, relying
on the genius of Napoleon without comprehending that genius is quite
as often beyond as at the bottom of current events. The old man had
Modeste Mignon |
