| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: themselves joining in the work, and how a soldier with an
accordion after staring for a long time open-mouthed at
these lunatics working on a Saturday afternoon put up a tune
for them on his instrument, and, delighted by their delight,
played on while the workers all sang together.
The idea of the "Saturdayings" spread quickly from railways
to factories, and by the middle of the summer reports of
similar efforts were coming from all over Russia. Then
Lenin became interested, seeing in these "Saturdayings" not
only a special effort in the face of common danger, but an
actual beginning of Communism and a sign that Socialism
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: (12) Polybius, i. 4, viii. 4, specially; and really PASSIM.
(13) He makes one exception.
(14) Polybius, viii. 4.
(15) Polybius, xvi. 12.
(16) Polybius, viii. 4: [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
(17) Polybius resembled Gibbon in many respects. Like him he held
that all religions were to the philosopher equally false, to the
vulgar equally true, to the statesman equally useful.
(18) Cf. Polybius, xii. 25, [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
(19) Polybius, xxii. 8.
(20) I mean particularly as regards his sweeping denunciation of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: but after thinking it over, he answered in the negative. This
incident, analogous to what may be known of the phenomena of sleep in
several persons, will illustrate the beginnings of Lambert's line of
talent; he took it, in fact, as the basis of a whole system, using a
fragment--as Cuvier did in another branch of inquiry--as a clue to the
reconstruction of a complete system.
At this moment we were sitting together on an old oak-stump, and after
a few minutes' reflection, Louis said to me:
"If the landscape did not come to me--which it is absurd to imagine--I
must have come here. If I was here while I was asleep in my cubicle,
does not that constitute a complete severance of my body and my inner
Louis Lambert |
