| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: And how, when he speculates upon his coming castles in the air, his
most roseate desire is to be but an indistinguishable particle of
the sunset clouds and vanish invisible as they into the starry
stillness of all-embracing space.
Now what does this strange impersonality betoken? Why are these
peoples so different from us in this most fundamental of
considerations to any people, the consideration of themselves?
The answer leads to some interesting conclusions.
Chapter 8. Imagination.
If, as is the case with the moon, the earth, as she travelled round
her orbit turned always the same face inward, we might expect to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Sprung from neglected loue. How now Ophelia?
You neede not tell vs, what Lord Hamlet saide,
We heard it all. My Lord, do as you please,
But if you hold it fit after the Play,
Let his Queene Mother all alone intreat him
To shew his Greefes: let her be round with him,
And Ile be plac'd so, please you in the eare
Of all their Conference. If she finde him not,
To England send him: Or confine him where
Your wisedome best shall thinke
King. It shall be so:
Hamlet |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: he has never buried a good old relative, infirm and poor, he will not
understand these pages, which to some will seem redolent of musk, to
others as colorless and virtuous as those of Florian. In short, the
reader must have known the luxury of tears, must have felt the silent
pangs of a passing memory, the vision of a dear yet far-off Shade,--
memories which bring regret for all that earth has swallowed up, with
smiles for vanished joys.
And now, believe that the writer would not, for the wealth of England,
steal from poesy a single lie with which to embellish this narrative.
The following is a true history, on which you may safely spend the
treasures of your sensibility--if you have any.
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