| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: they are conservative enough, but they instantly copy a more
advanced civilization the moment they get a chance. This proclivity
on their part is not out of keeping with our theory. On the
contrary, it is precisely what was to have been expected; for we see
the very same apparent contradiction in characters we are thrown
with every day. Imitation is the natural substitute for originality.
The less strong a man's personality the more prone is he to adopt
the ideas of others, on the same principle that a void more easily
admits a foreign body than does space that is already occupied; or
as a blank piece of paper takes a dye more brilliantly for not being
already tinted itself.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: men have been subject to two laws: they evolve slowly, and they
completely change their sense according to the mentalities in
which they find reception.
A doctrine may be compared to a living being. It subsists only
by process of transformation. The books are necessarily silent
upon these variations, so that the phase of things which they
establish belongs only to the past. They do not reflect the
image of the living, but of the dead. The written statement of a
doctrine often represents the most negligible side of that
doctrine.
I have shown in another work how institutions, arts, and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: without aim, I fired, as one would fire a snap shot at a snipe. The
bullet told, for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing sound
caused by the passage of the lion through the air. Next second I was
swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low, creeper-clad bush, which
broke the shock), and the lion was on the top of me, and the next those
great white teeth of his had met in my thigh--I heard them grate against
the bone. I yelled out in agony, for I did not feel in the least
benumbed and happy, like Dr. Livingstone--whom, by the way, I knew very
well--and gave myself up for dead. But suddenly, at that moment, the
lion's grip on my thigh loosened, and he stood over me, swaying to and
fro, his huge mouth, from which the blood was gushing, wide opened.
Long Odds |
