| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: predominate, before the New Protestantism becomes politically
practicable.*
*The necessity for breeding the governing class from a selected
stock has always been recognized by Aristocrats, however
erroneous their methods of selection. We have changed our system
from Aristocracy to Democracy without considering that we were at
the same time changing, as regards our governing class, from
Selection to Promiscuity. Those who have taken a practical part
in modern politics best know how farcical the result is.
The most inevitable dramatic conception, then, of the nineteenth
century, is that of a perfectly naive hero upsetting religion,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: recipients of these honours will rush into our arms as friends, not
only under the incentive of gain, but of distinction also.
Now the greater the number of people attracted to Athens either as
visitors or as residents, clearly the greater the development of
imports and exports. More goods will be sent out of the country,[8]
there will be more buying and selling, with a consequent influx of
money in the shape of rents to individuals and dues and customs to the
state exchequer. And to secure this augmentation of the revenues, mind
you, not the outlay of one single penny; nothing needed beyond one or
two philanthropic measures and certain details of supervision.[9]
[8] See Zurborg, "Comm." p. 24.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: been, as it were, the burden of Victurnien's cradle song. He heard
them from the old Marquis, from Mlle. Armande, from Chesnel, from the
intimates of the house. And so it came to pass that good and evil met,
and in equal forces, in the boy's soul.
At the age of eighteen, Victurnien went into society. He noticed some
slight discrepancies between the outer world of the town and the inner
world of the Hotel d'Esgrignon, but he in no wise tried to seek the
causes of them. And, indeed, the causes were to be found in Paris. He
had yet to learn that the men who spoke their minds out so boldly in
evening talk with his father, were extremely careful of what they said
in the presence of the hostile persons with whom their interests
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