| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: when abandoned to its instincts and liberated from all social
restraint it relapses into primitive savagery. The conception of
M. Aulard, entirely contrary to the lessons of the psychology of
crowds, is none the less a religious dogma in the eyes of modern
Jacobins. They write of the Revolution according to the methods
of believers, and take for learned works the arguments of virtual
theologians.
2. The Theory of Fatalism in respect of the Revolution.
Advocates and detractors of the Revolution often admit the
fatality of revolutionary events. This theory is well
synthetised in the following passage from the History of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: scraped all he could together, but the old man wanted more. If
Almayer could not get it he would go to Singapore--to Europe
even, but before all to Singapore; and he would take the little
Nina with him. The child must be brought up decently. He had
good friends in Singapore who would take care of her and have her
taught properly. All would be well, and that girl, upon whom the
old seaman seemed to have transferred all his former affection
for the mother, would be the richest woman in the East--in the
world even. So old Lingard shouted, pacing the verandah with his
heavy quarter-deck step, gesticulating with a smouldering
cheroot; ragged, dishevelled, enthusiastic; and Almayer, sitting
Almayer's Folly |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: for the moment, we will note that the Epeira works it up with her
legs after placing each spoke, teazles it with her claws, mats it
into felt with noteworthy diligence. In so doing, she gives the
spokes a solid common support, something like the hub of our
carriage-wheels.
The eventual regularity of the work suggests that the radii are
spun in the same order in which they figure in the web, each
following immediately upon its next neighbour. Matters pass in
another manner, which at first looks like disorder, but which is
really a judicious contrivance. After setting a few spokes in one
direction, the Epeira runs across to the other side to draw some in
The Life of the Spider |
