| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: dearest sister," he said.
"I was not so when I proposed this."
"Was it you who proposed it?" asked her brother.
She turned her head and gave him a little stare.
"Do you desire the credit of it?"
"If you like, I will take the blame," he said, looking up with a smile.
"Yes," she rejoined in a moment, "you make no difference in these things.
You have no sense of property."
The young man gave his joyous laugh again. "If that means I have no property,
you are right!"
"Don't joke about your poverty," said his sister.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: war is the change of opinion that is going on. What are people
making of it? Is it producing any great common understandings,
any fruitful unanimities?
No doubt it is producing enormous quantities of cerebration, but
is it anything more than chaotic and futile cerebration? We are
told all sorts of things in answer to that, things without a
scrap of evidence or probability to support them. It is, we are
assured, turning people to religion, making them moral and
thoughtful. It is also, we are assured with equal confidence,
turning them to despair and moral disaster. It will be followed
by (1) a period of moral renascence, and (2) a debauch. It is
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: So, too, they sought the grottos of the Nymphs-
The woodland haunts discovered as they ranged-
From forth of which they knew that gliding rills
With gush and splash abounding laved the rocks,
The dripping rocks, and trickled from above
Over the verdant moss; and here and there
Welled up and burst across the open flats.
As yet they knew not to enkindle fire
Against the cold, nor hairy pelts to use
And clothe their bodies with the spoils of beasts;
But huddled in groves, and mountain-caves, and woods,
Of The Nature of Things |
