| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: they retreated as had their fellow. Another glance over
my shoulder discovered the first eyes sneaking on me again.
And again I charged, only to see the eyes retreat before me
and hear the muffled rush of the three at my back.
Thus we continued, the eyes always a little closer in the
end than they had been before, until I thought that I should
go mad with the terrible strain of the ordeal. That they were
waiting to spring upon my back seemed evident, and that it
would not be long before they succeeded was equally apparent,
for I could not endure the wear of this repeated charge and
countercharge indefinitely. In fact, I could feel myself weakening
The Gods of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: cost of revolutions and repeated massacres. It is fortunate for
the progress of civilisation that the power of crowds only began
to exist when the great discoveries of science and industry had
already been effected.
5. THE MORALITY OF CROWDS.
Taking the word "morality" to mean constant respect for certain
social conventions, and the permanent repression of selfish
impulses, it is quite evident that crowds are too impulsive and
too mobile to be moral. If, however, we include in the term
morality the transitory display of certain qualities such as
abnegation, self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotion, and the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an
absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a
competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must
be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws;
but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the
consideration of my readers.'[1]
Faraday does not see the same difficulty in his contiguous particles.
And yet, by transferring the conception from masses to particles,
we simply lessen size and distance, but we do not alter the quality
of the conception. Whatever difficulty the mind experiences in
conceiving of action at sensible distances, besets it also when it
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