| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: parental duties. And at least it was not a trivial view, nor an ill
meant one. It was much more respectable than the general consensus of
opinion that if a school teacher can devise a question a child cannot
answer, or overhear it calling omega omeega, he or she may beat the
child viciously. Only, the cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral
excuse, and a pretence of reluctance. It must be for the child's
good. The assailant must say "This hurts me more than it hurts you."
There must be hypocrisy as well as cruelty. The injury to the child
would be far less if the voluptuary said frankly "I beat you because I
like beating you; and I shall do it whenever I can contrive an excuse
for it." But to represent this detestable lust to the child as Divine
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: proportion they observe in this distribution is twenty pots of beer,
ten of mead, and one cow to a hundred loaves. The chief officers
and persons of note carry their own provisions with them, which I
did too, though I afterwards found the precaution unnecessary, for I
had often two or three cows more than I wanted, which I bestowed on
those whose allowance fell short.
The Abyssins are not only obliged to maintain the troops in their
march, but to repair the roads, to clear them, especially in the
forests, of brambles and thorns, and by all means possible to
facilitate the passage of the army. They are, by long custom,
extremely ready at encamping. As soon as they come to a place they
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: distributed about the table moneys, bills, and letters, and set
to work. Petritsky, who knew he was ill-tempered on such
occasions, on waking up and seeing his comrade at the
writing-table, quietly dressed and went out without getting in
his way.
Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of
the conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the
complexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them
clear, is something exceptional and personal, peculiar to
himself, and never supposes that others are surrounded by just as
complicated an array of personal affairs as he is. So indeed it
Anna Karenina |
