{"product_id":"2940013741065","title":"Darkness and the Light","description":"IS IT credible that our world should have two futures? I have seen\u003cbr\u003ethem. Two entirely distinct futures lie before mankind, one dark, one\u003cbr\u003ebright; one the defeat of all man's hopes, the betrayal of all his\u003cbr\u003eideals, the other their hard-won triumph.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt some date within the age that we call modern, some date not\u003cbr\u003eprecisely known to me, for I looked back towards it from the distant\u003cbr\u003efutures as though searching in my remote past, the single torrent of\u003cbr\u003eterrestrial events is split, as though by a projecting promontory, so\u003cbr\u003ethat it becomes thenceforth two wholly distinct and mutually exclusive\u003cbr\u003esurging floods of intricate existence, each one a coherent and actual\u003cbr\u003ehistory, in which the lives of countless generations succeed one\u003cbr\u003eanother along separate ravines of time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow can this be? It cannot! Yet I have seen it happen. I have watched\u003cbr\u003ethose two divergent futures. I have lived through them. In any world,\u003cbr\u003eas on our planet, it needs must happen, when the will for the light\u003cbr\u003eand the will for the darkness are so delicately balanced in the\u003cbr\u003eordinary half-lucid spirits of the world that neither can for long\u003cbr\u003eprevail over the other. Out of their age-long stress and fluctuating\u003cbr\u003ebattle must spring at last a thing seemingly impossible, seemingly\u003cbr\u003eirrational, something wore stupendously miraculous than any orthodox\u003cbr\u003emiracle. For how can time itself be divided into two streams? And if\u003cbr\u003eour planet has two futures, which of them has place in the future of\u003cbr\u003ethe solar system, and what of the other? Or does man's vacillation\u003cbr\u003ecreate not only two future Earths but two future universes of stars\u003cbr\u003eand galaxies?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReader, affirm if you will that only one of the two futures that I\u003cbr\u003ehave watched is the real future, knit into the real cosmos, while the\u003cbr\u003eother is mere fantasy. Then which, I ask in terror, is real, the\u003cbr\u003ebright or the dark? For to me, who have seen both, neither is less\u003cbr\u003ereal than the other, but one is infinitely more to be desired.\u003cbr\u003ePerhaps, reader, you will contend that both are figments of my crazy\u003cbr\u003emind, and that the real future is inaccessible and inconceivable.\u003cbr\u003eBelieve what you will, but to me both are real, both are somehow\u003cbr\u003eclose-knit into the dread and lovely pattern of the universe. Nay\u003cbr\u003emore! My heart demands them both. For the light is more brilliant when\u003cbr\u003ethe dark offsets it. Though pity implores that all horror should turn\u003cbr\u003eout to have been a dream, yet for the light's own sake some sterner\u003cbr\u003epassion demands that evil may have its triumph.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070259609840,"sku":"2940013741065","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013741065_p0.jpg?v=1763589640","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013741065","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}