| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: whether by force or by excessive mental influence
such as may occur in education. These we will call
``evils of power.'' A social system may be judged
by its bearing upon these three kinds of evils.
The distinction between the three kinds cannot
be sharply drawn. Purely physical evil is a limit,
which we can never be sure of having reached: we
cannot abolish death, but we can often postpone it by
science, and it may ultimately become possible to
secure that the great majority shall live till old age;
we cannot wholly prevent pain, but we can diminish
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: slumbered, and the silver Venus that stood in the sunlight held out
her arms to a Venus as lovely as herself.
Was it Echo? He had called to her once in the valley, and she had
answered him word for word. Could she mock the eye, as she mocked
the voice? Could she make a mimic world just like the real world?
Could the shadows of things have colour and life and movement?
Could it be that - ?
He started, and taking from his breast the beautiful white rose, he
turned round, and kissed it. The monster had a rose of its own,
petal for petal the same! It kissed it with like kisses, and
pressed it to its heart with horrible gestures.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: at about ten every morning under the /Procuratie/, without anyone
knowing whence he came. He lounged about Venice, smoking cigars. He
regularly went to the Fenice, sitting in the pit-stalls, and between
the acts went round to Florian's, where he took three or four cups of
coffee a day; and he ended the evening at the cafe, never leaving it
till about two in the morning. Twelve hundred francs a year paid all
his expenses; he ate but one meal a day at an eating-house in the
Merceria, where the cook had his dinner ready for him at a fixed hour,
on a little table at the back of the shop; the pastry-cook's daughter
herself prepared his stuffed oysters, provided him with cigars, and
took care of his money. By his advice, this girl, though she was very
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