| 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: the instinctive, predatory, lustful, greedy people; the patient,
toiling, stupid, respectful, money-worshipping people; and the
intellectual, moral, talented people who devise and administer
States and Churches. History shows us only one order higher than
the highest of these: namely, the order of Heroes.
Now it is quite clear--though you have perhaps never thought of
it--that if the next generation of Englishmen consisted wholly of
Julius Caesars, all our political, ecclesiastical, and moral
institutions would vanish, and the less perishable of their
appurtenances be classed with Stonehenge and the cromlechs and
round towers as inexplicable relics of a bygone social order.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: the street, to the edge of one of the vacant lots, there where a
shallow ditch separated it from the roadway. An elder-tree, the
great size of which attested its age, hung its berry-laden branches
over the ditch. And in front of this tree the bird had stopped
suddenly, then fluttered off with the quick movement of the wild
creature surprised by fright. What the bird had seen was the same
vision that halted the song on Anna's lips and arrested her foot.
It was the body of a man - a young and well-dressed man, who lay
there with his face turned toward the street. And his face was the
white frozen face of a corpse.
Anna stood still, looking down at him for a few moments, in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: At length, when the truth dawned upon me, that he had really finished, not
without difficulty I began to collect myself, and looking at Hippocrates, I
said to him: O son of Apollodorus, how deeply grateful I am to you for
having brought me hither; I would not have missed the speech of Protagoras
for a great deal. For I used to imagine that no human care could make men
good; but I know better now. Yet I have still one very small difficulty
which I am sure that Protagoras will easily explain, as he has already
explained so much. If a man were to go and consult Pericles or any of our
great speakers about these matters, he might perhaps hear as fine a
discourse; but then when one has a question to ask of any of them, like
books, they can neither answer nor ask; and if any one challenges the least
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