| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: And, indeed, as regards the working of the speculative faculty in
the creation of history, it is in all respects marvellous how that
the most truthful accounts of the passage from barbarism to
civilisation in ancient literature come from the works of poets.
The elaborate researches of Mr. Tylor and Sir John Lubbock have
done little more than verify the theories put forward in the
PROMETHEUS BOUND and the DE NATURA RERUM; yet neither AEschylus nor
Lucretias followed in the modern path, but rather attained to truth
by a certain almost mystic power of creative imagination, such as
we now seek to banish from science as a dangerous power, though to
it science seems to owe many of its most splendid generalities. (5)
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: fops and beaux of the olden time, whose language and demeanor were
social laws: she called him "the pink of fashion." The liberal clique
caught up the word and used it satirically as a nickname, while the
royalist party continued to employ it in good faith.
Paul de Manerville acquitted himself gloriously of the obligations
imposed by his flowery title. It happened to him, as to many a
mediocre actor, that the day when the public granted him their full
attention he became, one may almost say, superior. Feeling at his
ease, he displayed the fine qualities which accompanied his defects.
His wit had nothing sharp or bitter in it; his manners were not
supercilious; his intercourse with women expressed the respect they
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: and the good order of society, he would answer, without hesitation,
that no civilised society, but more especially none in a state of
freedom, can exist without religion. Respect for religion is, in
his eyes, the greatest guarantee of the stability of the State, and
of the safety of the community. Those who are ignorant of the
science of government, know that fact at least."
M. de Tocqueville, when he wrote these words, was lamenting that in
France, "freedom was forsaken;" "a thing for which it is said that
no one any longer cares in France." He did not, it seems to me,
perceive that, as in America the best guarantee of freedom is the
reverence for a religion or religions, which are free themselves,
|
