| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: routes; a common language and a universal law have abolished a
thousand restraining inconveniences, and so an astonishing
dispersal of habitations has begun. One may live anywhere. And
so it is that our cities now are true social gatherings, each
with a character of its own and distinctive interests of its own,
and most of them with a common occupation. They lie out in the
former deserts, these long wasted sun-baths of the race, they
tower amidst eternal snows, they hide in remote islands, and bask
on broad lagoons. For a time the whole tendency of mankind was to
desert the river valleys in which the race had been cradled for
half a million years, but now that the War against Flies has been
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: closed the clubs and put an end to the invasion of the populace
by energetically shooting them down.
The Convention had early grasped the superiority of homogeneous
groups over heterogeneous assemblies in matters of government,
which is why it subdivided itself into committees composed each
of a limited number of individuals. These committees--of
Public Safety, of Finance, &c.--formed small sovereign assemblies
in the midst of the larger Assembly. Their power was held in
check only by that of the clubs.
The preceding considerations show the power of groups over the
wills of the members composing them. If the group is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: could come out of such humanity. I thought of the great ugly guns I
had seen, and of the still greater guns he had talked about, and how
gloatingly he thought of the destruction they could do. I felt as I
used to feel about that infernal stallion that had killed a man with
its teeth and feet, a despairing fear, a sense of monstrosity in
life. And this creature who had so disturbed me was only a beastly
snuffy little man in an ill-fitting frock-coat, who laid his knife
and fork by their tips on the edge of his plate, and picked his
teeth with gusto and breathed into my face as he talked to me. The
commoneside. The
monster of steel and iron carries Kaiser and Germany and all Europe
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