| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: But the God of this new age, we repeat, looks not to our past but
our future, and if a figure may represent him it must be the figure
of a beautiful youth, already brave and wise, but hardly come to his
strength. He should stand lightly on his feet in the morning time,
eager to go forward, as though he had but newly arisen to a day that
was still but a promise; he should bear a sword, that clean,
discriminating weapon, his eyes should be as bright as swords; his
lips should fall apart with eagerness for the great adventure before
him, and he should be in very fresh and golden harness, reflecting
the rising sun. Death should still hang like mists and cloud banks
and shadows in the valleys of the wide landscape about him. There
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: and with great delight showed us the new matches
invented in the Soviet laboratories. Russia is short of
match-wood, and without paraffin. Besides which I think I am
right in saying that the bulk of the matches used in the north
came from factories in Finland. In these new Bolshevik
matches neither wood nor paraffin is used. Waste paper is a
substitute for one, and the grease that is left after cleaning
wool is a substitute for the other. The little man, Berg,
secretary of the Presidium of the Council of Public
Economy, gave me a packet of his matches. They are like
the matches in a folding cover that used to be common in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: They banged their fists on the table and spoke of political
"pulls," the vending of votes, and so forth. Theirs was not the
talk of village babblers reconstructing the affairs of the
nation, but of strong, coarse, lustful men fighting for spoil,
and thoroughly understanding the best methods of reaching it.
I listened long and intently to speech I could not understand--or
but in spots.
It was the speech of business, however. I had sense enough to
know that, and to do my laughing outside the door.
Then I began to understand why my pleasant and well-educated
hosts in San Francisco spoke with a bitter scorn of such duties
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