The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: Modified rapidly by men of different mentalities, the original
theory is soon no more than a label which denotes something quite
unlike itself.
Applicable to religious beliefs, these principles are equally so
to political beliefs. When a man speaks of democracy, for
example, must we inquire what this word means to various peoples,
and also whether in the same people there is not a great
difference between the democracy of the ``intellectuals'' and
popular democracy.
In confining ourselves now to the consideration of this latter
point we shall readily perceive that the democratic ideas to be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: give proof thereof. Not good men according to our higher standard--
far from it; though Sidonius's picture of Theodoric, the East Goth,
in his palace of Narbonne, is the picture of an eminently good and
wise ruler. But not good, I say, as a rule--the Franks, alas! often
very bad men: but still better, wiser, abler, than those whom they
ruled. We must believe too, that they were better, in every sense
of the word, than those tribes on their eastern frontier, whom they
conquered in after centuries, unless we discredit (which we have no
reason to do) the accounts which the Roman and Greek writers give of
the horrible savagery of those tribes.
So it was in later centuries. One cannot read fairly the history of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: Two Songs for a Child
I
Grandfather's Love
They said he sent his love to me,
They wouldn't put it in my hand,
And when I asked them where it was
They said I couldn't understand.
I thought they must have hidden it,
I hunted for it all the day,
And when I told them so at night
They smiled and turned their heads away.
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