| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: (of every obstacle to such return). Of this subjugation we know not
what shall be the limit; and when one knows not what the limit shall
be, he may be the ruler of a state.
3. He who possesses the mother of the state may continue long. His
case is like that (of the plant) of which we say that its roots are
deep and its flower stalks firm:--this is the way to secure that its
enduring life shall long be seen.
60. 1. Governing a great state is like cooking small fish.
2. Let the kingdom be governed according to the Tao, and the manes of
the departed will not manifest their spiritual energy. It is not that
those manes have not that spiritual energy, but it will not be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: indescribable magnetic something, drew us before long into one of
those short-lived traveller's intimacies, in which we unbend with
the more complacency because the intercourse is by its very
nature transient, and makes no implicit demands upon the future.
We had not come thirty leagues before we were talking of women
and love. Then, with all the circumspection demanded in such
matters, we proceeded naturally to the topic of our lady-loves.
Young as we both were, we still admired "the woman of a certain
age," that is to say, the woman between thirty-five and forty.
Oh! any poet who should have listened to our talk, for heaven
knows how many stages beyond Montargis, would have reaped a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: It is a matter of many weeks now--diversified indeed by some long
drives into the mountains behind us and a memorable sail to Genoa
across the blue and purple waters that drowned Shelley--since I
began a laboured and futile imitation of "The Prince." I sat up
late last night with the jumbled accumulation; and at last made a
little fire of olive twigs and burnt it all, sheet by sheet--to
begin again clear this morning.
But incidentally I have re-read most of Machiavelli, not excepting
those scandalous letters of his to Vettori, and it seems to me, now
that I have released myself altogether from his literary precedent,
that he still has his use for me. In spite of his vast prestige I
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