| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: pantheistic; but the great Spanish mystics are anything but
pantheists. They are with few exceptions non-metaphysical minds,
for whom "the category of personality" is absolute. The "union"
of man with God is for them much more like an occasional miracle
than like an original identity.[284] How different again, apart
from the happiness common to all, is the mysticism of Walt
Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Richard Jefferies, and other
naturalistic pantheists, from the more distinctively Christian
sort.[285] The fact is that the mystical feeling of enlargement,
union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual content
whatever of its own. It is capable of forming matrimonial
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: I listened to the end; then stepping into the
cabin I laid my hand on the mate's forehead. It
was cool. He was light-headed only from extreme
weakness. Suddenly he seemed to become aware
of me, and in his own voice--of course, very feeble
--he asked regretfully:
"Is there no chance at all to get under way, sir?"
"What's the good of letting go our hold of the
ground only to drift, Mr. Burns?" I answered.
He sighed and I left him to his immobility. His
hold on life was as slender as his hold on sanity. I
The Shadow Line |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: over the ground with the sliding speed of active snails. Behind
them trail two wheels, supporting a flimsy tail, wheels that
strike one as incongruous as if a monster began kangaroo and
ended doll's perambulator. (These wheels annoy me.) They are not
steely monsters; they are painted with drab and unassuming
colours that are fashionable in modern warfare, so that the
armour seems rather like the integument of a rhinoceros. At the
sides of the head project armoured checks, and from above these
stick out guns that look like stalked eyes. That is the general
appearance of the contemporary tank.
It slides on the ground; the silly little wheels that so detract
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