| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: not till the Thursday that the dead came to the surface in any
quantity. The view was bounded on every side by a gray mist that
closed overhead in a gray canopy. The air cleared in the
afternoon, and then, far away to the west under great banks of
steam and dust, the flaming red eruption of the atomic bombs came
visible across the waste of water.
They showed flat and sullen through the mist, like London
sunsets. 'They sat upon the sea,' says Barnet, 'like frayed-out
waterlilies of flame.'
Barnet seems to have spent the morning in rescue work along the
track of the canal, in helping people who were adrift, in picking
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed
United States Declaration of Independence |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: it never hides. Throughout the length and breadth of the land, and
from the highest prince to the humblest peasant, art reigns supreme.
Now such a prevalence of artistic feeling implies of itself
impersonality in the people. At first sight it might seem as if
science did the same, and that in this respect the one hemisphere
offset the other, and that consequently both should be equally
impersonal. But in the first place, our masses are not imbued with
the scientific spirit, as theirs are with artistic sensibility.
Who would expect of a mason an impersonal interest in the principles
of the arch, or of a plumber a non-financial devotion to hydraulics?
Certainly one would be wrong in crediting the masses in general or
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