| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: have a dread of opinion, which amounts at times to terror, and
causes them to adopt an utterly unstable line of conduct.
The opinion of crowds tends, then, more and more to become the
supreme guiding principle in politics. It goes so far to-day as
to force on alliances, as has been seen recently in the case of
the Franco-Russian alliance, which is solely the outcome of a
popular movement. A curious symptom of the present time is to
observe popes, kings, and emperors consent to be interviewed as a
means of submitting their views on a given subject to the
judgment of crowds. Formerly it might have been correct to say
that politics were not a matter of sentiment. Can the same be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: that policy, and remind him of my passionate temper, verging, when
kindled, on frenzy. I wish you could dismiss that apathy out of
that countenance, and look rather more anxious about me.'
The stolidity with which I received these instructions was, no
doubt, rather exasperating: for they were delivered in perfect
sincerity; but I believed a person who could plan the turning of
her fits of passion to account, beforehand, might, by exerting her
will, manage to control herself tolerably, even while under their
influence; and I did not wish to 'frighten' her husband, as she
said, and multiply his annoyances for the purpose of serving her
selfishness. Therefore I said nothing when I met the master coming
Wuthering Heights |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: served, and every one must look to his own interest, let another get
what he can. And who can be so smart as to think of all the ways in
which one can get many things into his possession by such specious
pretexts? This the world does not consider wrong [nor is it punished by
laws], and will not see that the neighbor is thereby placed at a
disadvantage, and must sacrifice what he cannot spare without injury.
Yet there is no one who wishes this to be done to him; from which we
can easily perceive that such devices and pretexts are false.
Thus it was done formerly also with respect to wives: they knew such
devices that if one were pleased with another woman, he personally or
through others (as there were many ways and means to be invented)
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