The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: an old-time Chinese brave. Liberal-minded people talk of the
coming dangers of militarism in the face of events that prove
conclusively that professional militarism is already as dead as
Julius Caesar. What is coming is not so much the conversion
of men into soldiers as the socialisation of the economic
organisation of the country with a view to both national and
international necessities. We do not want to turn a chemist or a
photographer into a little figure like a lead soldier, moving
mechanically at the word of command, but we do want to make his
chemistry or photography swiftly available if the national
organisation is called upon to fight.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: blowing your brains out, you would find it here, for we haven't yet
done any business of that sort, eh, Paul? If you had to fight
to-morrow, I would measure the ground and load the pistols, so that
you might be killed according to rule. In short, if anybody besides
myself took it into his head to say ill of you in your absence, he
would have to deal with the somewhat nasty gentleman who walks in my
shoes--there's what I call a friendship beyond question. Well, my good
fellow, if you should ever have need of discretion, understand that
there are two sorts of discretion--the active and the negative.
Negative discretion is that of fools who make use of silence,
negation, an air of refusal, the discretion of locked doors--mere
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Upon the boughs and setting out in holes
The young shrubs o'er the fields. Then would they try
Ever new modes of tilling their loved crofts,
And mark they would how earth improved the taste
Of the wild fruits by fond and fostering care.
And day by day they'd force the woods to move
Still higher up the mountain, and to yield
The place below for tilth, that there they might,
On plains and uplands, have their meadow-plats,
Cisterns and runnels, crops of standing grain,
And happy vineyards, and that all along
Of The Nature of Things |