| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: at sea, a suggestion which, by a process of contagion, was
accepted by all those present, both officers and sailors.
It is not necessary that a crowd should be numerous for the
faculty of seeing what is taking place before its eyes to be
destroyed and for the real facts to be replaced by hallucinations
unrelated to them. As soon as a few individuals are gathered
together they constitute a crowd, and, though they should be
distinguished men of learning, they assume all the
characteristics of crowds with regard to matters outside their
speciality. The faculty of observation and the critical spirit
possessed by each of them individually at once disappears. An
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: have me go homeward yet. What if there be another noble deed
to be done, before I see the sunny hills of Hellas?'
So he went east, and east for ever, by fresh oases and
fountains, date-palms, and lawns of grass, till he saw before
him a mighty mountain-wall, all rose-red in the setting sun.
Then he towered in the air like an eagle, for his limbs were
strong again; and he flew all night across the mountain till
the day began to dawn, and rosy-fingered Eos came blushing up
the sky. And then, behold, beneath him was the long green
garden of Egypt and the shining stream of Nile.
And he saw cities walled up to heaven, and temples, and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: accomplish this his eyes glowing with the fire of his age, went
swiftly, like the clapper of a bell, from this said foot of
delectation to the sleeping countenance of his lady and mistress,
listening to her slumber, drinking in her respiration again and again,
it did not know where it would be sweetest to plant a kiss--whether on
the ripe red lips of the seneschal's wife or on this speaking foot. At
length, from respect or fear, or perhaps from great love, he chose the
foot, and kissed it hastily, like a maiden who dares not. Then
immediately he took up his book, feeling his red cheeks redder still,
and exercised with his pleasure, he cried like a blind man--"Janua
coeli,: gate of Heaven." But Blanche did not move, making sure that
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
