| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: "Eh!" grunted Weymouth.
But West went on hoarsely:
"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes.
It was `Bayard Taylor.'"
At that I interrupted West.
"I understand!" I cried. "I understand! Another name has just occurred
to me, Mr. West--that of the Frenchman, Moreau."
"You have solved the mystery," said Smith. "It was natural
Mr. West should have thought of the American traveler,
Bayard Taylor, though. Moreau's book is purely scientific.
He has probably never read it."
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: are reinforced by the trombones, producing the most tremendous
effect possible in such a crescendo. Unfortunately, however, the
brass asserted itself at this point so much more emphatically
than the voices that the effect was almost to disjoin the latter
portion of the chord from its beginning, and thus to dwarf the
utterance of the word "Awake." To us this effect was very
disagreeable; and it was obviously contrary to the effect
intended by the composer. But with a weight of four or five
hundred voices, the effect would be entirely different. Instead
of entering upon the scene as intruders, the mighty trombones
would only serve to swell and enrich the ponderous chord which
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: an absolute beauty, and goodness, and an absolute essence of all things;
and if to this, which is now discovered to have existed in our former
state, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them, finding
these ideas to be pre-existent and our inborn possession--then our souls
must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be no force in the
argument? There is the same proof that these ideas must have existed
before we were born, as that our souls existed before we were born; and if
not the ideas, then not the souls.
Yes, Socrates; I am convinced that there is precisely the same necessity
for the one as for the other; and the argument retreats successfully to the
position that the existence of the soul before birth cannot be separated
|
