| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's
forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry
and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs,
clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of
rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- what
earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive
forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose
foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in
feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these
means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: his horses.
"I have no conscience, none," she added; "but I would not like to bring a
soul into this world. When it sinned and when it suffered something like a
dead hand would fall on me--'You did it, you, for your own pleasure you
created this thing! See your work!' If it lived to be eighty it would
always hang like a millstone round my neck, have the right to demand good
from me, and curse me for its sorrow. A parent is only like to God--if his
work turns out bad, so much the worse for him; he dare not wash his hands
of it. Time and years can never bring the day when you can say to your
child: 'Soul, what have I to do with you?'"
Waldo said dreamingly:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: but Francine, the only person to whom the least shade on that young
face was visible. Completely routed, the commandant picked up the bits
of his broken sword, looked at Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose ardent
beauty was beginning to find its way to his heart, and said: "As for
you, mademoiselle, I take nothing back, and to-morrow these fragments
of my sword will reach Bonaparte, unless--"
"Pooh! what do I care for Bonaparte, or your republic, or the king, or
the Gars?" she cried, scarcely repressing an explosion of ill-bred
temper.
A mysterious emotion, the passion of which gave to her face a dazzling
color, showed that the whole world was nothing to the girl the moment
The Chouans |
