| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: loss. This would not deter those in whom the impulse
was strong and genuine, but would tend to
exclude the dilettante. Many young artists at
present endure voluntarily much greater poverty
than need be entailed by only doing half the usual
day's work in a well-organized Socialist community;
and some degree of hardship is not objectionable,
as a test of the strength of the creative impulse, and
as an offset to the peculiar joys of the creative life.
The other possibility[58] would be that the necessaries
of life should be free, as Anarchists desire, to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: the roof.
The quarryman, her deceased husband, and the builder of this dwelling,
had put strong iron bars to all the windows; the front door was
remarkably thick. The man knew that he was alone there in the open
country--and what a country! His customers were the principal master-
masons in Paris, so the more important materials for his house, which
stood within five hundred yards of his quarry, had been brought out in
his own carts returning empty. He could choose such as suited him
where houses were pulled down, and got them very cheap. Thus the
window frames, the iron-work, the doors, shutters, and wooden fittings
were all derived from sanctioned pilfering, presents from his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: for it is in a valley.
'There are nine gates to this city, and in front of each gate
stands a bronze horse that neighs when the Bedouins come down from
the mountains. The walls are cased with copper, and the watch-
towers on the walls are roofed with brass. In every tower stands
an archer with a bow in his hand. At sunrise he strikes with an
arrow on a gong, and at sunset he blows through a horn of horn.
'When I sought to enter, the guards stopped me and asked of me who
I was. I made answer that I was a Dervish and on my way to the
city of Mecca, where there was a green veil on which the Koran was
embroidered in silver letters by the hands of the angels. They
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