| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: intervention, did not, instead of this comparatively trivial
meteorological assistance, adopt the more effective course of, for
example, exploding or spoiling the German stores of ammunition by
some simple atomic miracle, or misdirecting their gunfire by a
sudden local modification of the laws of refraction or gravitation.
Since these views of God come from Anglican vicarages I can only
conclude that this kind of belief is quite orthodox and permissible
in the established church, and that I am charging orthodox
Christianity here with nothing that has ever been officially
repudiated. I find indeed the essential assumptions of Mr. Landseer
Mackenzie repeated in endless official Christian utterances on the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: stranger present who is thus shut out from the conversation, but in
this case it was embarrassment. Though at first I thought she treated
me as a child and I envied the man of thirty to whom she talked of
serious matters which I could not comprehend, I came, a few months
later, to understand how significant a woman's silence often is, and
how many thoughts a voluble conversation masks. At first I attempted
to be at my ease and take part in it, then I perceived the advantages
of my situation and gave myself up to the charm of listening to Madame
de Mortsauf's voice. The breath of her soul rose and fell among the
syllables as sound is divided by the notes of a flute; it died away to
the ear as it quickened the pulsation of the blood. Her way of
The Lily of the Valley |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: CRITIAS: Certainly I consider that those who have such wants are bad, and
that the greater their wants the worse they are.
SOCRATES: And do we think it possible that a thing should be useful for a
purpose unless we have need of it for that purpose?
CRITIAS: No.
SOCRATES: Then if these things are useful for supplying the needs of the
body, we must want them for that purpose?
CRITIAS: That is my opinion.
SOCRATES: And he to whom the greatest number of things are useful for his
purpose, will also want the greatest number of means of accomplishing it,
supposing that we necessarily feel the want of all useful things?
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