| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: Laws of the Evolution of Peoples"). From it the reader will see
that, in spite of fallacious appearances, neither language,
religion, arts, or, in a word, any element of civilisation, can
pass, intact, from one people to another.
Environment, circumstances, and events represent the social
suggestions of the moment. They may have a considerable
influence, but this influence is always momentary if it be
contrary to the suggestions of the race; that is, to those which
are inherited by a nation from the entire series of its
ancestors.
We shall have occasion in several of the chapters of this work to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: in the Gospel, but that when he read it he seemed to be reading in
his own soul, and felt himself capable of rising higher and higher
toward God and merging himself in Him.
TURGÉNIEFF
I DO not mean to recount all the misunderstandings which existed
between my father and Turgénieff, which ended in a complete
breach between them in 1861. The actual external facts of that
story are common property, and there is no need to repeat
them.¹ According to general opinion, the quarrel between the
two greatest writers of the day arose out of their literary
rivalry.
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