| 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: teaching, and is politically extremely dangerous in an empire in which
a huge majority of the fellow subjects of the governing island do not
profess the religion of that island.
But this objectivity, though intellectually honest, tells the child
only what other people believe. What it should itself believe is
quite another matter. The sort of Rationalism which says to a child
"You must suspend your judgment until you are old enough to choose
your religion" is Rationalism gone mad. The child must have a
conscience and a code of honor (which is the essence of religion) even
if it be only a provisional one, to be revised at its confirmation.
For confirmation is meant to signalize a spiritual coming of age, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: mythology its root in than English literature! Mythology is the
crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted,
before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; and
which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated.
All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow
our houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western
Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will
endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil
in which it thrives.
The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The
valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Shine having yielded
Walking |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: Pemberton, as he was still fondly called, the inhabitants of Elmville
saw the relic of their state's ancient greatness and glory. In his day
he had been a man large in the eye of his country. His state had
pressed upon him every honour within its gift. And now when he was
old, and enjoying a richly merited repose outside the swift current of
public affairs, his townsmen loved to do him reverence for the sake of
the past.
The Governor's decaying "mansion" stood upon the main street of
Elmville within a few feet of its rickety paling-fence. Every morning
the Governor would descend the steps with extreme care and
deliberation--on account of his rheumatism--and then the click of his
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