| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: science is unpersonal rather than impersonal. Art, on the other hand,
is a familiar spirit. Through the windows of the senses she finds
her way into the very soul of man, and makes for herself a home there.
But it is to his humanity, not to his individuality, that she
whispers, for she speaks in that universal tongue which all can
understand.
Examples are not wanting to substantiate theory. It is no mere
coincidence that the two most impersonal nations of Europe and Asia
respectively, the French and the Japanese, are at the same time the
most artistic. Even politeness, which, as we have seen,
distinguishes both, is itself but a form of art,--the social art of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations and
antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their
seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely
provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from some
corner, perhaps from below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to
borrow an expression current among painters. In spite of all the
value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the
unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more
fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to
pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity.
It might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of
Beyond Good and Evil |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: anywhere in bad weather. These flowers of Paris, blooming only in
Oriental weather, perfume the highways; and after five o'clock fold up
like morning-glory flowers. The women you will see later, looking a
little like them, are would-be ladies; while the fair Unknown, your
Beatrice of a day, is a 'perfect lady.'
"It is not very easy for a foreigner, my dear Count, to recognize the
differences by which the observer /emeritus/ distinguishes them--women
are such consummate actresses; but they are glaring in the eyes of
Parisians: hooks ill fastened, strings showing loops of rusty-white
tape through a gaping slit in the back, rubbed shoe-leather, ironed
bonnet-strings, an over-full skirt, an over-tight waist. You will see
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