| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: I should pray heaven to set upon the seat of government just such
another as yourself.'
'The devil you would!' exclaimed the Prince.
The licentiate Roederer laughed most heartily. 'I thought I should
astonish you,' he said. 'These are not the ideas of the masses.'
'They are not, I can assure you,' Otto said.
'Or rather,' distinguished the licentiate, 'not to-day. The time
will come, however, when these ideas shall prevail.'
'You will permit me, sir, to doubt it,' said Otto.
'Modesty is always admirable,' chuckled the theorist. 'But yet I
assure you, a man like you, with such a man as, say, Doctor Gotthold
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: which are the expression on the surface of the ocean of
deep-lying disturbances of which we know nothing. So far as the
majority of their acts are considered, crowds display a
singularly inferior mentality; yet there are other acts in which
they appear to be guided by those mysterious forces which the
ancients denominated destiny, nature, or providence, which we
call the voices of the dead, and whose power it is impossible to
overlook, although we ignore their essence. It would seem, at
times, as if there were latent forces in the inner being of
nations which serve to guide them. What, for instance, can be
more complicated, more logical, more marvellous than a language?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: advancement for King's men. Was there a member of an official staff of
prosecuting counsel who could hear of a Bonapartist conspiracy
breaking out somewhere else without a feeling of envy? Where was the
man that did not burn to discover a Caron, or a Berton, or a revolt of
some sort? With reasons of State, and the necessity of diffusing the
monarchical spirit throughout France as their basis, and a fierce
ambition stirred up whenever party spirit ran high, these ardent
politicians on their promotion were lucid, clear-sighted, and
perspicacious. They kept up a vigorous detective system throughout the
kingdom; they did the work of spies, and urged the nation along a path
of obedience, from which it had no business to swerve.
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