| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure
the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are
part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping
the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by
amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the
difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on
such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic
virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just
as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks,
Many a light foot shone like a jewel set
In the dark crag: and then we turned, we wound
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in,
Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
Of shales and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun
Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: painful facts right in the face as Arthur was to turn away his
eyes from them. Moreover, he had the wakeful suspicious pride of
a poor man in the presence of a rich man. He felt his old
severity returning as he said, "The time's past for that, sir. A
man should make sacrifices to keep clear of doing a wrong;
sacrifices won't undo it when it's done. When people's feelings
have got a deadly wound, they can't be cured with favours."
"Favours!" said Arthur, passionately; "no; how can you suppose I
meant that? But the Poysers--Mr. Irwine tells me the Poysers mean
to leave the place where they have lived so many years--for
generations. Don't you see, as Mr. Irwine does, that if they
Adam Bede |
