| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: the existing truth--should arise and give to mankind the last three
books of the Zend-avesta, and convert all mankind to the pure creed,
then evil should be conquered, the creation become pure again, and
Ahriman vanish for ever; and, meanwhile, every good man was to fight
valiantly for Ormuzd, his true lord, against Ahriman and all his
works.
Men who held such a creed, and could speak truth and draw the bow,
what might they not do when the hour and the man arrived? They were
not a BIG nation. No; but they were a GREAT nation, even while they
were eating barley-bread and paying tribute to their conquerors the
Medes, in the sterile valleys of Farsistan.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: directing opinion, their only endeavour is to follow it. They
have a dread of opinion, which amounts at times to terror, and
causes them to adopt an utterly unstable line of conduct.
The opinion of crowds tends, then, more and more to become the
supreme guiding principle in politics. It goes so far to-day as
to force on alliances, as has been seen recently in the case of
the Franco-Russian alliance, which is solely the outcome of a
popular movement. A curious symptom of the present time is to
observe popes, kings, and emperors consent to be interviewed as a
means of submitting their views on a given subject to the
judgment of crowds. Formerly it might have been correct to say
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: that the greater man is greater by reason of the head, which is small. You
would be afraid to draw such an inference, would you not?
Indeed, I should, said Cebes, laughing.
In like manner you would be afraid to say that ten exceeded eight by, and
by reason of, two; but would say by, and by reason of, number; or you would
say that two cubits exceed one cubit not by a half, but by magnitude?-for
there is the same liability to error in all these cases.
Very true, he said.
Again, would you not be cautious of affirming that the addition of one to
one, or the division of one, is the cause of two? And you would loudly
asseverate that you know of no way in which anything comes into existence
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