| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: her imaginary ideal. She felt added satisfaction in believing him to
be well born, her black eyes sparkled, and she danced with all the
pleasure that comes of dancing in the presence of the being we love.
The couple had never understood each other as well as at this moment;
more than once they felt their finger tips thrill and tremble as they
were married in the figures of the dance.
The early autumn had come to the handsome pair, in the midst of
country festivities and pleasures; they had abandoned themselves
softly to the tide of the sweetest sentiment in life, strengthening it
by a thousand little incidents which any one can imagine; for love is
in some respects always the same. They studied each other through it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: politic. I will illustrate this thought of mine by examples. Let us
suppose that there are a hundred peers in France, there are only one
hundred causes of offence. Abolish the peerage, and all the wealthy
people will constitute the privileged class; instead of a hundred, you
will have ten thousand, instead of removing class distinctions, you
have merely widened the mischief. In fact, from the people's point of
view, the right to live without working is in itself a privilege. The
unproductive consumer is a robber in their eyes. The only work that
they understand has palpable results; they set no value on
intellectual labor--the kind of labor which is the principal source of
wealth to them. So by multiplying causes of offence in this way, you
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: accessible to English readers in the translation of Mr. Ashton
Ellis. This being so, any person who, having perhaps heard that I
am a Socialist, attempts to persuade you that my interpretation
of The Rhine Gold is only "my socialism" read into the works of a
dilettantist who borrowed an idle tale from an old saga to make
an opera book with, may safely be dismissed from your
consideration as an ignoramus.
If you are now satisfied that The Rhine Gold is an allegory, do
not forget that an allegory is never quite consistent except when
it is written by someone without dramatic faculty, in which case
it is unreadable. There is only one way of dramatizing an idea;
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