| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: Do not speak,
For there are times when all existences
Seem narrowed to one single ecstasy,
And Passion sets a seal upon the lips.
GUIDO
Oh, with mine own lips let me break that seal!
You love me, Beatrice?
DUCHESS
Ay! is it not strange
I should so love mine enemy?
GUIDO
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: not a rationalist, but a believer. Far from building his belief
on reason, he moulds reason to his belief, and although his
speeches are steeped in rationalism he employs it very little in
his thoughts and his conduct.
A Jacobin who reasoned as much as he is accused of reasoning
would be sometimes accessible to the voice of reason. Now,
observation proves, from the time of the Revolution to our own
days, that the Jacobin is never influenced by reasoning, however
just, and it is precisely here that his strength resides.
And why is he not accessible to reason? Simply because his
vision of things, always extremely limited, does not permit of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: and could enjoy myself very <23> well in Siberia on a fine day.
And what can life in town offer in the way of pleasure to equal
the delight of any one of the calm evenings I have had this month
sitting alone at the foot of the verandah steps, with the perfume
of young larches all about, and the May moon hanging low over
the beeches, and the beautiful silence made only more profound
in its peace by the croaking of distant frogs and hooting of owls?
A cockchafer darting by close to my ear with a loud hum sends a shiver
through me, partly of pleasure at the reminder of past summers,
and partly of fear lest he should get caught in my hair.
The Man of Wrath says they are pernicious creatures and should be killed.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
