| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: The Priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired his priestly care.
And standing on the altar high,
'Lo, what a fiend is here!' said he:
'One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery.'
The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: I observed his vexation, and feared that they would proceed to abuse and
quarrelling: so I said,--I heard that very argument used in the Lyceum
yesterday by a wise man, Prodicus of Ceos; but the audience thought that he
was talking mere nonsense, and no one could be persuaded that he was
speaking the truth. And when at last a certain talkative young gentleman
came in, and, taking his seat, began to laugh and jeer at Prodicus,
tormenting him and demanding an explanation of his argument, he gained the
ear of the audience far more than Prodicus.
Can you repeat the discourse to us? Said Erasistratus.
SOCRATES: If I can only remember it, I will. The youth began by asking
Prodicus, In what way did he think that riches were a good and in what an
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: than all Napoleon's battles and all Broussais' leeches. The mass
is a papal invention, not older than the sixth century, and
based on the Hoc est corpus. What floods of blood were shed to
establish the Fete-Dieu, the Festival of Corpus Christi--the
institution by which Rome established her triumph in the question
of the Real Presence, a schism which rent the Church during three
centuries! The wars of the Count of Toulouse against the
Albigenses were the tail end of that dispute. The Vaudois and the
Albigenses refused to recognize this innovation."
In short, Desplein was delighted to disport himself in his most
atheistical vein; a flow of Voltairean satire, or, to be
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