| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: hated me. I don't know that I should have said hate, for that
is not exactly the word. It was more contempt that I felt for
men whom I considered as not belonging upon that intellectual
or social plane to which I considered I had been born.
"I thought of people who moved outside my limited sphere
as 'the great unwashed.' I pitied them, and I honestly believe
now that in the bottom of my heart I considered them of
different clay than I, and with souls, if they possessed such
things, about on a par with the souls of sheep and cows.
"I couldn't have seen the man in you, Billy, then, any more
than you could have seen the man in me. I have learned much
The Mucker |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: wide circle, continued at full speed up Spermonde Passage, heading
for the town. She lay still, perfectly still, with something ill-
omened and unnatural in her attitude. In an instant the subtle
melancholy of things touched by decay had fallen on her in the
sunshine; she was but a speck in the brilliant emptiness of space,
already lonely, already desolate.
"Hold him!" yelled a voice from the bridge.
Jasper had started to run to his brig with a headlong impulse, as a
man dashes forward to pull away with his hands a living, breathing,
loved creature from the brink of destruction. "Hold him! Stick to
him!" vociferated the lieutenant at the top of the bridge-ladder,
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: most frequently indeed did not count at all. To-day it is the
traditions which used to obtain in politics, and the individual
tendencies and rivalries of rulers which do not count; while, on
the contrary, the voice of the masses has become preponderant.
It is this voice that dictates their conduct to kings, whose
endeavour is to take note of its utterances. The destinies of
nations are elaborated at present in the heart of the masses, and
no longer in the councils of princes.
The entry of the popular classes into political life--that is to
say, in reality, their progressive transformation into governing
classes--is one of the most striking characteristics of our epoch
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