| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: great theoretical importance, is that the penalties hitherto
regarded, save for a few platonic declarations, as the best
remedies for crime, are less effectual than they are supposed to
be. For crimes and offences increase and diminish by a
combination of other causes, which are far from being identical
with the punishments lightly written out by legislators and
awarded by judges.
History affords us various impressive examples.
The Roman Empire, when society had fallen into extreme corruption,
recalling many symptoms of our own epoch, vainly promulgated laws
which visited celibacy, adultery, and incest--``venus
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: glass, or lakes melted together in a mirror. A fiery vapor carried up
in surging waves made a perpetual whirlwind over the quivering land.
The sky was lit with an Oriental splendor of insupportable purity,
leaving naught for the imagination to desire. Heaven and earth were on
fire.
The silence was awful in its wild and terrible majesty. Infinity,
immensity, closed in upon the soul from every side. Not a cloud in the
sky, not a breath in the air, not a flaw on the bosom of the sand,
ever moving in diminutive waves; the horizon ended as at sea on a
clear day, with one line of light, definite as the cut of a sword.
The Provencal threw his arms round the trunk of one of the palm trees,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: old woman. Once out of her clutches and she cannot harm you.
"With your knowledge of this strange land, and my knowledge
of the outer world, two such fighting-men as you and I
should be able to win our way to freedom. Even though we
died in the attempt, would not our memories be fairer than
as though we remained in servile fear to be butchered by a
cruel and unjust tyrant--call her goddess or mortal, as you will."
As I finished I raised Xodar to his feet and released him.
He did not renew the attack upon me, nor did he speak.
Instead, he walked toward the bench, and, sinking down upon it,
remained lost in deep thought for hours.
The Gods of Mars |
