| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: hardly necessary for me to state that I find both iron and bismuth
in such vacua perfectly obedient to the magnet. From such
experiments, and also from general observations and knowledge, it
seems manifest that the lines of magnetic force can traverse pure
space, just as gravitating force does, and as statical electrical
forces do, and therefore space has a magnetic relation of its own,
and one that we shall probably find hereafter to be of the utmost
importance in natural phenomena. But this character of space is not
of the same kind as that which, in relation to matter, we endeavour
to express by the terms magnetic and diamagnetic. To confuse these
together would be to confound space with matter, and to trouble all
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: peasantry have put it during your two years' absence. What could I do?
I am steward; I am not a bailiff. To guard Les Aigues properly you
need a mounted patrol and three keepers."
"I certainly shall have the estate properly guarded. So it is to be
war, is it? Very good, then we shall make war. That doesn't frighten
me," said Montcornet, rubbing his hands.
"A war of francs," said Sibilet; "and you may find that more difficult
than the other kind; men can be killed but you can't kill self-
interest. You will fight your enemy on the battle-field where all
landlords are compelled to fight,--I mean cash results. It is not
enough to produce, you must sell; and in order to sell, you must be on
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: party of French officers were discussing the chances of war, and the
not too hopeful outlook prognosticated by the conduct of the Spaniards
present at that grand ball.
" 'I can only tell you,' said the surgeon-major of the company of
which I was paymaster, 'I applied formally to Prince Murat only
yesterday to be recalled. Without being afraid exactly of leaving my
bones in the Peninsula, I would rather dress the wounds made by our
worthy neighbors the Germans. Their weapons do not run quite so deep
into the body as these Castilian daggers. Besides, a certain dread of
Spain is, with me, a sort of superstition. From my earliest youth I
have read Spanish books, and a heap of gloomy romances and tales of
The Muse of the Department |
