| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: period of the cycle which we are here considering.
Upon the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, only the bourgeois
republic could follow; that is to say, a limited portion of the
bourgeoisie having ruled under the name of the king, now the whole
bourgeoisie was to rule under the name of the people. The demands of
the Parisian proletariat are utopian tom-fooleries that have to be done
away with. To this declaration of the constitutional national assembly,
the Paris proletariat answers with the June insurrection, the most
colossal event in the history of European civil wars. The bourgeois
republic won. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the
industrial bourgeoisie; the middle class; the small traders' class; the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: a fearfully mutilated copy of Caxton's edition of the Canterbury Tales,
with woodcuts. Like the book at Paris, it had long been used,
leaf by leaf, in utter ignorance of its value, to light the vestry fire.
Originally worth at least L800, it was then worth half, and, of course,
I energetically drew the attention of the minister in charge to it, as well
as to another grand Folio by Rood and Hunte, 1480. Some years elapsed,
and then the Ecclesiastical Commissioners took the foundation in hand,
but when at last Trustees were appointed, and the valuable library was
re-arranged and catalogued, this "Caxton," together with the fine copy
of "Latterbury" from the first Oxford Press, had disappeared entirely.
Whatever ignorance may have been displayed in the mutilation, quite another
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: So saying Corentin got down, and stood about for a few minutes
examining the ground. He looked at the two elms which faced each
other,--one against the park wall, the other on the bank of the /rond-
point/; then he saw (what no one had yet noticed) the button of a
uniform lying in the dust, and he picked it up. Entering the lodge he
saw Violette and Michu sitting at the table in the kitchen and talking
eagerly. Violette rose, bowed to Corentin, and offered him some wine.
"Thank you, no; I came to see the corporal," said the young man, who
saw with half a glance that Violette had been drunk all night.
"My wife is nursing him upstairs," said Michu.
"Well, corporal, how are you?" said Corentin who had run up the stairs
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