| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any
property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your
property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into
capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being
monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can
no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital,
from that moment, you say individuality vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no
other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: the fact in dignified language. He who believes in the struggle for
existence and in the principle of natural selection, will acknowledge that
every organic being is constantly endeavouring to increase in numbers; and
that if any one being vary ever so little, either in habits or structure,
and thus gain an advantage over some other inhabitant of the country, it
will seize on the place of that inhabitant, however different it may be
from its own place. Hence it will cause him no surprise that there should
be geese and frigate-birds with webbed feet, either living on the dry land
or most rarely alighting on the water; that there should be long-toed
corncrakes living in meadows instead of in swamps; that there should be
woodpeckers where not a tree grows; that there should be diving thrushes,
On the Origin of Species |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: LADY BASILDON. Certainly not comic, Lord Goring. How unkind of you
to suggest such a thing!
MRS. MARCHMONT. I am afraid Lord Goring is in the camp of the enemy,
as usual. I saw him talking to that Mrs. Cheveley when he came in.
LORD GORING. Handsome woman, Mrs. Cheveley!
LADY BASILDON. [Stiffly.] Please don't praise other women in our
presence. You might wait for us to do that!
LORD GORING. I did wait.
MRS. MARCHMONT. Well, we are not going to praise her. I hear she
went to the Opera on Monday night, and told Tommy Rufford at supper
that, as far as she could see, London Society was entirely made up of
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