The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: The philosophers of the eighteenth century explained the
gradual decay of religious faith in a very simple manner.
Religious zeal, said they, must necessarily fail, the more
generally liberty is established and knowledge diffused.
Unfortunately, facts are by no means in accordance with their
theory. There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief
is only equalled by their ignorance and their debasement, whilst
in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the
world fulfils all the outward duties of religious fervor.
Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect
of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: took refuge who were able to escape the catastrophe that ruined our
globe--if, indeed men had existed before that cataclysm or shock? A
serious query, the answer to which lies at the bottom of the sea. The
anthropogony of the Bible is merely a genealogy of a swarm escaping
from the human hive which settled on the mountainous slopes of Thibet
between the summits of the Himalaya and the Caucasus.
"The character of the primitive ideas of that horde called by its
lawgiver the people of God, no doubt to secure its unity, and perhaps
also to induce it to maintain his laws and his system of government--
for the Books of Moses are a religious, political, and civil code--
that character bears the authority of terror; convulsions of nature
Louis Lambert |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: fed by the male alone. But the American cuckoo is in this predicament; for
she makes her own nest and has eggs and young successively hatched, all at
the same time. It has been asserted that the American cuckoo occasionally
lays her eggs in other birds' nests; but I hear on the high authority of
Dr. Brewer, that this is a mistake. Nevertheless, I could give several
instances of various birds which have been known occasionally to lay their
eggs in other birds' nests. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor
of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo; but that
occasionally she laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird
profited by this occasional habit, or if the young were made more vigorous
by advantage having been taken of the mistaken maternal instinct of another
On the Origin of Species |