| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: besides, Benham, there's the expense. I can't afford the equestrian
order."
"It's not so great."
"Not so great! I don't mean the essential expense. But--the
incidentals. I don't know whether any one can realize how a poor
man is hampered by the dread of minor catastrophes. It isn't so
much that he is afraid of breaking his neck, Benham, as that he is
afraid of breaking something he will have to pay for. For instance--.
Benham! how much did your little expedition the other day--?"
He stopped short and regarded his friend with round eyes and raised
eyebrows.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: funeral feast could have been more sad, for flowers and wine and
fair women do not make pleasure, and after all it was a funeral
feast--for me.
At length it came to an end and I fled to my own apartments,
whither my three wives followed me, for Otomie did not come,
calling me most happy and blessed who to-morrow should be with
myself, that is with my own godhead, in heaven. But I did not call
them blessed, for, rising in wrath, I drove them away, saying that
I had but one comfort left, and it was that wherever I might go I
should leave them behind.
Then I cast myself upon the cushions of my bed and mourned in my
Montezuma's Daughter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: remain free at all.
Individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain to.
As a natural result the State must give up all idea of government.
It must give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries
before Christ, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone;
there is no such thing as governing mankind. All modes of
government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody,
including the despot, who was probably made for better things.
Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to
the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy
means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the
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