| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: had to be sown at sea. It was the exact truth, but he would not
have understood the somewhat exceptional psychology of my sea-
going, I fear.
"I suppose you've never come across one of your countrymen at
sea. Have you now?"
I admitted I never had. The examiner had given himself up to the
spirit of gossiping idleness. For myself, I was in no haste to
leave that room. Not in the least. The era of examinations was
over. I would never again see that friendly man who was a
professional ancestor, a sort of grandfather in the craft.
Moreover, I had to wait till he dismissed me, and of that there
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: human beings, but as things; and as things not bound together in one
living body, but lying in a fortuitous heap. A swarm of ants is not
a mass. It has a polity and a unity. Not the ants but the fir-
needles and sticks, of which the ants have piled their nest, are a
mass.
The term, I believe, was invented during the Ancien Regime. Whether
it was or not, it expresses very accurately the life of the many in
those days. No one would speak, if he wished to speak exactly, of
the masses of the United States; for there every man is, or is
presumed to be, a personage; with his own independence, his own
activities, his own rights and duties. No one, I believe, would
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: The draughts of Achelous; and ye Fauns
To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Fauns
And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing.
And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first
Sprang from earth's womb at thy great trident's stroke,
Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom
Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes,
The fertile brakes of Ceos; and clothed in power,
Thy native forest and Lycean lawns,
Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love
Of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear
Georgics |
