| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: She flashed a look at him that mocked his confidence. "I've heard
about the vanity of girls, but never in my experience have I met
any so colossal as this masculine vanity now on exhibit. Do you
really think, Mr. Collins, that all you have to do to win a woman
is to look impressive and tell her that you have decided to marry
her?"
"Do I look as if I thought that?" he asked her.
"It is perfectly ridiculous--your absurd attitude of taking
everything for granted. Well, it may be the Tucson custom, but
where I come from it is not in vogue."
"No, I reckon not. Back there a boy persuades girl he loves her
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: wonderful stories would be patterned, and that to such a type
tradition also would be made to conform.
In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to
Euhemerism. If there is any one conclusion concerning the
Homeric poems which the labours of a whole generation of
scholars may be said to have satisfactorily established, it is
this, that no trustworthy history can be obtained from either
the Iliad or the Odyssey merely by sifting out the mythical
element. Even if the poems contain the faint reminiscence of
an actual event, that event is inextricably wrapped up in
mythical phraseology, so that by no cunning of the scholar can
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: distance from the truth than if, having chosen one of the extremes, it
should turn out to be the other which I ought to have adopted. And I
placed in the class of extremes especially all promises by which somewhat
of our freedom is abridged; not that I disapproved of the laws which, to
provide against the instability of men of feeble resolution, when what is
sought to be accomplished is some good, permit engagements by vows and
contracts binding the parties to persevere in it, or even, for the
security of commerce, sanction similar engagements where the purpose
sought to be realized is indifferent: but because I did not find anything
on earth which was wholly superior to change, and because, for myself in
particular, I hoped gradually to perfect my judgments, and not to suffer
Reason Discourse |
