| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: rays, and when distinct self-consciousness is hardly
yet developed, then the presences imagined in Nature are
merely flickering and intermittent phantoms, and their
propitiation and placation comes more properly under, the
head of 'Magic.']
So much for the genesis of the religious ideas of Sin
and Sacrifice, and the rites connected with these ideas--
their genesis through the in-break of self-consciousness
upon the corporate SUB-consciousness of the life of the
Community. But an exactly similar process may be observed
in the case of the other religious ideas.
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: And two of them, in form of messengers,
Ran forth to meet us, and demanded of us,
"Of your condition make us cognisant."
And said my Master: "Ye can go your way
And carry back again to those who sent you,
That this one's body is of very flesh.
If they stood still because they saw his shadow,
As I suppose, enough is answered them;
Him let them honour, it may profit them."
Vapours enkindled saw I ne'er so swiftly
At early nightfall cleave the air serene,
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: Monsieur Desmarets was, five years before his marriage, in a broker's
office, with no other means than the meagre salary of a clerk. But he
was a man to whom misfortune had early taught the truths of life, and
he followed the strait path with the tenacity of an insect making for
its nest; he was one of those dogged young men who feign death before
an obstacle and wear out everybody's patience with their own beetle-
like perseverance. Thus, young as he was, he had all the republican
virtue of poor peoples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to
pleasure. He waited. Nature had given him the immense advantage of an
agreeable exterior. His calm, pure brow, the shape of his placid, but
expressive face, his simple manners,--all revealed in him a laborious
Ferragus |
