| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: the whole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves
themselves they received, not merely very little assistance, but
hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the
slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely
free that they were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted
the new state of things. To the thinker, the most tragic fact in
the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was
killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the
Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of
feudalism.
It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: lacks after six months of flatteries. Andoche Finot, the self-made man
in question, stiff, taciturn, cold, and dull-witted, possessed the
sort of spirit which will not shrink from groveling before any
creature that may be of use to him, and the cunning to be insolent
when he needs a man no longer. Like one of the grotesque figures in
the ballet in Gustave, he was a marquis behind, a boor in front. And
this high-priest of commerce had a following.
Emile Blondet, Journalist, with abundance of intellectual power,
reckless, brilliant, and indolent, could do anything that he chose,
yet he submitted to be exploited with his eyes open. Treacherous or
kind upon impulse, a man to love, but not to respect; quick-witted as
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story,
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
The Fall of the House of Usher |
