| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: is difficult indeed.
CHAPTER IV
THE PART PLAYED BY THE PEOPLE IN REVOLUTIONS
1. The stability and malleability of the national mind.
The knowledge of a people at any given moment of its history
involves an understanding of its environment and above all of its
past. Theoretically one may deny that past, as did the men of
the Revolution, as many men of the present day have done, but its
influence remains indestructible.
In the past, built up by slow accumulations of centuries, was
formed the aggregation of thoughts, sentiments, traditions, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: her handsome business partner. She had found herself doing the
same thing from the time he had met her at the dock late in the
afternoon of the day before. Those four months had wrought some
subtle change. But what? Where? She frowned a moment in
thought.
Then:
"Is that a new suit, T. A.?"
"This? Lord, no! Last summer's. Put it on because of this
July hangover in September. Why?"
"Oh, I don't know"--vaguely--"I just--wondered."
There was nothing vague about T. A. Buck, however. His old air
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: have studied that head so full of patience, of Flemish loyalty, and
pure morality,--where all was broad and noble, and passion seemed calm
because it was strong.
The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word was
sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness
complete: and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic
service, for the world or for the family, was directed, fatally,
elsewhere. This citizen, bound to guard the welfare of a household, to
manage property, to guide his children towards a noble future, was
living outside the line of his duty and his affections, in communion
with an attendant spirit. A priest might have thought him inspired by
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