| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic
wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently described.
The geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes farther--farther
than I am ready to follow him; yet not when he says: "As the
plant is made for the animal, as the vegetable world is made for
the animal world, America is made for the man of the Old
World.... The man of the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving
the highlands of Asia, he descends from station to station
towards Europe. Each of his steps is marked by a new civilization
superior to the preceding, by a greater power of development.
Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: orders of unwisdom;--and finally of the Jesuits who, really with
considerable excuses for their severity, fell upon these poor
foolish Illuminati in 1784 throughout Bavaria, and had them exiled
or imprisoned;--of all this you may read in the pages of Dr. Findel,
and in many another book. For, forgotten as they are now, they made
noise enough in their time.
And so it befell, that this eighteenth century, which is usually
held to be the most "materialistic" of epochs, was, in fact, a most
"spiritualistic" one; in which ghosts, demons, quacks, philosophers'
stones, enchanters' wands, mysteries and mummeries, were as
fashionable--as they will probably be again some day.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: insufferable by every mortal except the recipients:--
"MADAME,--Your power over my heart, my soul, myself, is so great
that my fate depends wholly upon you to-day. Do not throw this
letter into the fire; be so kind as to read it through. Perhaps
you may pardon the opening sentence when you see that it is no
commonplace, selfish declaration, but that it expresses a simple
fact. Perhaps you may feel moved, because I ask for so little, by
the submission of one who feels himself so much beneath you, by
the influence that your decision will exercise upon my life. At my
age, madame, I only know how to love, I am utterly ignorant of
ways of attracting and winning a woman's love, but in my own heart
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