| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: soon destroyed by their enemies. But the true art of government, first
preparing the material by education, weaves the two elements into one,
maintaining authority over the carders of the wool, and selecting the
proper subsidiary arts which are necessary for making the web. The royal
science is queen of educators, and begins by choosing the natures which she
is to train, punishing with death and exterminating those who are violently
carried away to atheism and injustice, and enslaving those who are
wallowing in the mire of ignorance. The rest of the citizens she blends
into one, combining the stronger element of courage, which we may call the
warp, with the softer element of temperance, which we may imagine to be the
woof. These she binds together, first taking the eternal elements of the
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: in my mind in some way the grotesque animalism of the islanders
with his abominations; and now I thought I saw it all.
The memory of his work on the transfusion of blood recurred to me.
These creatures I had seen were the victims of some hideous experiment.
These sickening scoundrels had merely intended to keep me back,
to fool me with their display of confidence, and presently to fall
upon me with a fate more horrible than death,--with torture;
and after torture the most hideous degradation it is possible
to conceive,--to send me off a lost soul, a beast, to the rest of their
Comus rout.
I looked round for some weapon. Nothing. Then with an inspiration I
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: offer your starved wives to Juggernaut for the iron nail you have
yourselves compounded."
He spent the night over his journal, writing down such thoughts
as these or walking the floor from wall to wall, or, seized at
times with unreasoning horror and blind rage, flinging himself
face downward upon his bed, vowing with inarticulate cries that
neither S. Behrman nor Shelgrim should ever live to consummate
their triumph.
Morning came and with it the daily papers and news. Presley did
not even glance at the "Mercury." Bonneville published two other
daily journals that professed to voice the will and reflect the
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