| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: virgin ore, not the finished ornament that is smelted out of it--if,
indeed, it is finished yet, which I greatly doubt. I dare say that a
time may come when the perfected generations--if Civilisation, as we
understand it, really has a future and any such should be allowed to
enjoy their hour on the World--will look back to us as crude,
half-developed creatures whose only merit was that we handed on the
flame of life.
Maybe, maybe, for everything goes by comparison; and at one end of the
ladder is the ape-man, and at the other, as we hope, the angel. No, not
the angel; he belongs to a different sphere, but that last expression of
humanity upon which I will not speculate. While man is man--that is,
Child of Storm |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: he was not selected.
Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened
man who spat broken English and many strange and uncouth
exclamations which Buck could not understand.
"Sacredam!" he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. "Dat one dam
bully dog! Eh? How moch?"
"Three hundred, and a present at that," was the prompt reply of
the man in the red sweater. "And seem' it's government money, you
ain't got no kick coming, eh, Perrault?"
Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been
boomed skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: war, it must be granted, especially when of fair and noble type, have
many times ere now proved benefactors to those they have enslaved. By
dint of chastening, they have forced the vanquished to become better
men and to lead more tranquil lives in future.[22] But these despotic
queens never cease to plague and torment their victims in body and
soul and substance until their sway is ended.
[21] "To use others as their slaves."
[22] Lit. "Enemies for the matter of that, when, being beautiful and
good, they chance to have enslaved some other, have ere now in
many an instance chastened and compelled the vanquished to be
better and to live more easily for the rest of time."
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