| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: looked up and observed: "I dare say there are very pretty lanes in
Highgate. I can recollect walking with your mother, Katharine, through
lanes blossoming with wild hawthorn. But where is the hawthorn now?
You remember that exquisite description in De Quincey, Mr. Popham?--
but I forget, you, in your generation, with all your activity and
enlightenment, at which I can only marvel"--here she displayed both
her beautiful white hands--"do not read De Quincey. You have your
Belloc, your Chesterton, your Bernard Shaw--why should you read De
Quincey?"
"But I do read De Quincey," Ralph protested, "more than Belloc and
Chesterton, anyhow."
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the
summer.
"It is a ridiculous attachment," twittered the other Swallows; "she
has no money, and far too many relations"; and indeed the river was
quite full of Reeds. Then, when the autumn came they all flew
away.
After they had gone he felt lonely, and began to tire of his lady-
love. "She has no conversation," he said, "and I am afraid that
she is a coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind." And
certainly, whenever the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful
curtseys. "I admit that she is domestic," he continued, "but I
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: part, under the influence of immediate necessities and never of
speculative reasoning.
"To think nothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to
remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly; never to
innovate except when some grievance is felt; never to innovate
except so far as to get rid of the grievance; never to lay down
any proposition of wider extent than the particular case for
which it is necessary to provide; these are the rules which have,
from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally guided the
deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments."
It would be necessary to take one by one the laws and
|
