| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: necessities of life in common exert their influence. The
assemblage of dissimilar units begins to blend into a whole, to
form a race; that is, an aggregate possessing common
characteristics and sentiments to which heredity will give
greater and greater fixity. The crowd has become a people, and
this people is able to emerge from its barbarous state. However,
it will only entirely emerge therefrom when, after long efforts,
struggles necessarily repeated, and innumerable recommencements,
it shall have acquired an ideal. The nature of this ideal is of
slight importance; whether it be the cult of Rome, the might of
Athens, or the triumph of Allah, it will suffice to endow all the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: "Possibly, but we want to have an understanding. You've stood in, you and
your father-in-law, with some of the most substantial and forward-looking
interests in town, like my friends of the Street Traction Company, and my
papers have given you a lot of boosts. Well, you can't expect the decent
citizens to go on aiding you if you intend to side with precisely the people
who are trying to undermine us."
Babbitt was frightened, but he had an agonized instinct that if he yielded in
this he would yield in everything. He protested:
"You're exaggerating, Colonel. I believe in being broad-minded and liberal,
but, of course, I'm just as much agin the cranks and blatherskites and labor
unions and so on as you are. But fact is, I belong to so many organizations
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Kneeling in fervent prayer, with heart-sick eyes
Turned thro' the casement toward the westering skies;
Or as untamed Elijah, that red brand
Among the starry prophets; or that band
And company of Faithful sanctities
Who in all times, when persecutions rise,
Cherish forgotten creeds with fostering hand:
Such do ye seem to me, light-hearted crew,
O turned to friendly arts with all your will,
That keep a little chapel sacred still,
One rood of Holy-land in this bleak earth
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