| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: habitable planet, from ice-cap to ice-cap, will be inhabited. And
in the matter of food-getting, as in everything else, man is only
finite. Undreamed-of efficiencies in food-getting may be
achieved, but, soon or late, man will find himself face to face
with Malthus' grim law. Not only will population catch up with
subsistence, but it will press against subsistence, and the
pressure will be pitiless and savage. Somewhere in the future is
a date when man will face, consciously, the bitter fact that there
is not food enough for all of him to eat.
When this day comes, what then? Will there be a recrudescence of
old obsolete war? In a saturated population life is always cheap,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: began to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or turn aside
into cow-paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window
tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catch
him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; some by
the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's; and others by
the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoemaker,
or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more terrible standing
invitation to call at every one of these houses, and company
expected about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully
from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without
deliberation to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: they lay as though dead; only Umslopogaas and I kept our senses.
We were within fifty yards of it now, and I saw the Zulu's head
fall forward on his hands. He had gone too, and I was alone.
I could not breathe; the fierce heat dried me up. For yards
and yards round the great rose of fire the rock-roof was red-hot.
The wood of the boat was almost burning. I saw the feathers
on one of the dead swans begin to twist and shrivel up; but I
would not give in. I knew that if I did we should pass within
three or four yards of the gas jet and perish miserably. I set
the paddle so as to turn the canoe as far from it as possible,
and held on grimly.
Allan Quatermain |
