| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: curious narratives are given of the total abeyance of physical life
which a man can attain to under the paroxysms of the inner life. By
reflecting on the effects of fanaticism, Lambert was led to believe
that the collected ideas to which we give the name of feelings may
very possibly be the material outcome of some fluid which is generated
in all men, more or less abundantly, according to the way in which
their organs absorb, from the medium in which they live, the
elementary atoms that produce it. We went crazy over catalepsy; and
with the eagerness that boys throw into every pursuit, we endeavored
to endure pain by thinking of something else. We exhausted ourselves
by making experiments not unlike those of the epileptic fanatics of
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: almost all children, in these latter days, inherit, with the
scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors. Perhaps this,
too, was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild energy with
which Hester had fought against her sorrows before Pearl's birth.
It was certainly a
222 THE SCARLET LETTER
The Scarlet Letter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: similar evolutions--that is all. The principle of all these
evolutions remains, but the concrete results are never twice
alike. Man was not; he was; and again he will not be. In
eternity which is beyond our comprehension, the particular
evolution of that solar satellite we call the "Earth" occupied but
a slight fraction of time. And of that fraction of time man
occupies but a small portion. All the whole human drift, from the
first ape-man to the last savant, is but a phantom, a flash of
light and a flutter of movement across the infinite face of the
starry night.
When the thermometer drops, man ceases--with all his lusts and
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