| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: needs, that it is a condition of the existence of the nation in
question, and we should pity the poor mental range of politicians
who talk of destroying it. Could they by chance succeed in this
attempt, their success would at once be the signal for a
frightful civil war,[10] which, moreover, would immediately bring
back a new system of centralisation much more oppressive than the
old.
[10] If a comparison be made between the profound religious and
political dissensions which separate the various parties in
France, and are more especially the result of social questions,
and the separatist tendencies which were manifested at the time
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: and windswept between its jagged and malignly frowning pylons.
Beyond it was a sky fretted with swirling vapors and lighted by
the low polar sun - the sky of that mysterious farther realm upon
which we felt no human eye had ever gazed.
A few more feet of
altitude and we would behold that realm. Danforth and I, unable
to speak except in shouts amidst the howling, piping wind that
raced through the pass and added to the noise of the unmuffled
engines, exchanged eloquent glances. And then, having gained those
last few feet, we did indeed stare across the momentous divide
and over the unsampled secrets of an elder and utterly alien earth.
At the Mountains of Madness |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: instinctive loyalty and blind discretion. The eventuality he had
not foreseen had appalled him as a humane man and a fond husband.
From every other point of view it was rather advantageous. Nothing
can equal the everlasting discretion of death. Mr Verloc, sitting
perplexed and frightened in the small parlour of the Cheshire
Cheese, could not help acknowledging that to himself, because his
sensibility did not stand in the way of his judgment. Stevie's
violent disintegration, however disturbing to think about, only
assured the success; for, of course, the knocking down of a wall
was not the aim of Mr Vladimir's menaces, but the production of a
moral effect. With much trouble and distress on Mr Verloc's part
The Secret Agent |
