| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: went up in the air and disappeared from the earth. It
was a pity, but it was necessary. We could not afford
to let the enemy turn our own weapons against us.
Now ensued one of the dullest quarter-hours I had
ever endured. We waited in a silent solitude enclosed
by our circles of wire, and by a circle of heavy smoke
outside of these. We couldn't see over the wall of
smoke, and we couldn't see through it. But at last it
began to shred away lazily, and by the end of another
quarter-hour the land was clear and our curiosity was
enabled to satisfy itself. No living creature was in
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: root of all civilisations--The social necessity of
illusions--Crowds always prefer them to truths. 3.
EXPERIENCE. Experience alone can fix in the mind of crowds truths
become necessary and destroy illusions grown
dangerous--Experience is only effective on the condition that it
be frequently repeated--The cost of the experiences requisite to
persuade crowds. 4. REASON. The nullity of its influence on
crowds--Crowds only to be influenced by their unconscious
sentiments-- The role of logic in history--The secret causes of
improbable events.
We have just investigated the remote and preparatory factors
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: on the contrary, with the simplicity a notary might have shown when
asking the intentions of a client about a deed. Presently she shuffled
the cards, and asked Gazonal to cut them, and then to make three packs
of them himself. After which she took the packs, spread them out
before her, and examined them as a gambler examines the thirty-six
numbers at roulette before he risks his stake. Gazonal's bones were
freezing; he seemed not to know where he was; but his amazement grew
greater and greater when this hideous old woman in a green bonnet,
stout and squat, whose false front was frizzed into points of
interrogation, proceeded, in a thick voice, to relate to him all the
particular circumstances, even the most secret, of his past life: she
|
