| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts
for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures,
and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping
our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal.
And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing.
It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything
priced above its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same.
Some day you will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little
out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of colour, or something. You will
bitterly re-
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: Veda, the Edda, and the Lay of the Nibelungs.
Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly are, they are modern
in comparison with the tale of Achilleus and Helena, as here
unfolded. The date of the entrance of the Greeks into Europe
will perhaps never be determined; but I do not see how any
competent scholar can well place it at less than eight hundred
or a thousand years before the time of Homer. Between the two
epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and Keltic lauguages had
time to acquire distinct individualities. Far earlier,
therefore, than the Homeric "juventus mundi" was that "youth
of the world," in which the Aryan forefathers, knowing no
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: His real habitude gave life and grace
To appertainings and to ornament,
Accomplish'd in himself, not in his case,:
All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,
Came for additions; yet their purpos'd trim
Pierc'd not his grace, but were all grac'd by him.
'So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kind of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
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