| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: 'Well,' I said, 'as long as your strength holds out and you can go on putting
a few more patches on papa's pants, we'll just pass up buying clothes."'
"That's right, brother. And just look at collars, frinstance--"
"Hey! Wait!" the fat man protested. "What's the matter with collars? I'm
selling collars! D' you realize the cost of labor on collars is still two
hundred and seven per cent. above--"
They voted that if their old friend the fat man sold collars, then the price
of collars was exactly what it should be; but all other clothing was
tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now. They went
profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of
manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: having misled him into the belief that he was dealing with
doctrinally permissible food. It was not unusual to be given hand-
bills and printed matter by our guests, but there I had the
advantage over Lewis, who was too tactful to refuse the stuff, too
neatly dressed to pocket it, and had no writing-desk available upon
which he could relieve himself in a manner flattering to the giver.
So that his hands got fuller and fuller. A relentless, compact
little woman in what Margaret declared to be an extremely expensive
black dress has also printed herself on my memory; she had set her
heart upon my contributing to a weekly periodical in the lentil
interest with which she was associated, and I spent much time and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of
others, to stand 'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it,
and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own
incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the
whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of
people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism -
are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves
surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous
starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by
all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's
intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on
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