| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: wide and varied knowledge that you possess. Often they take the
place of such knowledge; for some really ignorant men, born with
natural gifts and accustomed to give connection to their ideas,
have been known to attain a grandeur never reached by others far
more worthy of it. I have studied you thoroughly, Felix, wishing
to know if your education, derived wholly from schools, has
injured your nature. God knows the joy with which I find you fit
for that further education of which I speak.
The manners of many who are brought up in the traditions of the
great world are purely external; true politeness, perfect manners,
come from the heart, and from a deep sense of personal dignity.
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: console us under evils which are irremediable, but we see that it is fatal
to the higher life of man. It seems to say to us, 'The world is a vast
system or machine which can be conceived under the forms of logic, but in
which no single man can do any great good or any great harm. Even if it
were a thousand times worse than it is, it could be arranged in categories
and explained by philosophers. And what more do we want?'
The philosophy of Hegel appeals to an historical criterion: the ideas of
men have a succession in time as well as an order of thought. But the
assumption that there is a correspondence between the succession of ideas
in history and the natural order of philosophy is hardly true even of the
beginnings of thought. And in later systems forms of thought are too
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: That dismal world, if any clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways their flying march, along the banks
Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge
Into the burning lake their baleful streams--
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Paradise Lost |
