| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: writers already cited do not show us--a permanent struggle
between theorists who were imbued with a new ideal, and the
economic, social, and political laws which ruled mankind, and
which they did not understand. Not understanding them, they
sought in vain to direct the course of events, were exasperated
at their failure, and finally committed every species of
violence. They decreed that the paper money known as assignats
should be accepted as the equivalent of gold, and all their
threats could not prevent the fictitious value of such money
falling almost to nothing. They decreed the law of the maximum,
and it merely increased the evils it was intended to remedy.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: At the outset of his life, in the prime of youth and the beauty
of youth, he knew the illusions of life for what they were; he
despised the world, and made the utmost of the world. His
felicity could not have been of the bourgeois kind, rejoicing in
periodically recurrent bouilli, in the comforts of a warming-pan,
a lamp of a night, and a new pair of slippers once a quarter.
Nay, rather he seized upon existence as a monkey snatches a nut,
and after no long toying with it, proceeds deftly to strip off
the mere husks to reach the savory kernel within.
Poetry and the sublime transports of passion scarcely reached
ankle-depth with him now. He in nowise fell into the error of
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: park. Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named--
NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to
me. And already there is a sign up:
KEEP OFF
THE GRASS
My life is not as happy as it was.
Saturday
The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going to run short,
most likely. "We" again--that is its word; mine too, now, from
hearing it so much. Good deal of fog this morning. I do not go
out in the fog myself. The new creature does. It goes out in
|
