| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: are Yogi Bootstrap-lifters with flowing robes of yellow silk;
Theosophist Bootstrap-lifters with green and purple auras; Mormon
Bootstrap-lifters, Mazdaznan Bootstrap-lifters, Spiritualist and
Spirit-Fruit, Millerite and Dowieite, Holy Roller and Holy
Jumper, Come-to-glory negro, Billy Sunday base-ball and Salvation
Army bass-drum Bootstrap-lifters. There are the thousand
varieties of "New Thought" Bootstrap-lifters; the mystic and
transcendentalist, Swedenborgian and Jacob Boehme
Bootstrap-lifters; the Elbert Hubbard high-art Bootstrap-lifters
with half a million magazinelets at two bits apiece; the "uplift"
and "optimist," the Ralph Waldo Trine and Orison Swett Marden
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: not by art or knowledge about Homer do you say what you say, but by divine
inspiration and by possession; just as the Corybantian revellers too have a
quick perception of that strain only which is appropriated to the God by
whom they are possessed, and have plenty of dances and words for that, but
take no heed of any other. And you, Ion, when the name of Homer is
mentioned have plenty to say, and have nothing to say of others. You ask,
'Why is this?' The answer is that you praise Homer not by art but by
divine inspiration.
ION: That is good, Socrates; and yet I doubt whether you will ever have
eloquence enough to persuade me that I praise Homer only when I am mad and
possessed; and if you could hear me speak of him I am sure you would never
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all. As a consequence
our art is of the moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is
of the sun and deals directly with things. I feel sure that in
elemental forces there is purification, and I want to go back to
them and live in their presence.
Of course to one so modern as I am, 'Enfant de mon siecle,' merely
to look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with
pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison
both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens,
and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying
gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its
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