| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: and nothing was ever stolen from him. At Gottenburg--a town situated
some sixty miles from Stockholm--he announced, eight days before the
news arrived by courier, the conflagration which ravaged Stockholm,
and the exact time at which it took place. The Queen of Sweden wrote
to her brother, the King, at Berlin, that one of her ladies-in-
waiting, who was ordered by the courts to pay a sum of money which she
was certain her husband had paid before his death, went to Swedenborg
and begged him to ask her husband where she could find proof of the
payment. The following day Swedenborg, having done as the lady
requested, pointed out the place where the receipt would be found. He
also begged the deceased to appear to his wife, and the latter saw her
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: independence, she could not imagine. But how little of
permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only
brought together because their passions were stronger than their
virtue, she could easily conjecture.
Mr. Gardiner soon wrote again to his brother. To Mr. Bennet's
acknowledgments he briefly replied, with assurance of his
eagerness to promote the welfare of any of his family; and
concluded with entreaties that the subject might never be
mentioned to him again. The principal purport of his letter was
to inform them that Mr. Wickham had resolved on quitting the
militia.
Pride and Prejudice |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: marvellous and the legendary that are its true supports.
Appearances have always played a much more important part than
reality in history, where the unreal is always of greater moment
than the real.
Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be
impressed by images. It is only images that terrify or attract
them and become motives of action.
For this reason theatrical representations, in which the image is
shown in its most clearly visible shape, always have an enormous
influence on crowds. Bread and spectacular shows constituted for
the plebeians of ancient Rome the ideal of happiness, and they
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