| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was
fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the
family; kept on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once
the gull was away on a journey for a few days, and when it
returned the house was vacant. Its friends had removed to a
village three miles distant. Several months later it saw the
head of the family on the street there, followed him home,
entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily
guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had
memory and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them
Edisonially.
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: PROTARCHUS: What are the two kinds?
SOCRATES: In the first place, arithmetic is of two kinds, one of which is
popular, and the other philosophical.
PROTARCHUS: How would you distinguish them?
SOCRATES: There is a wide difference between them, Protarchus; some
arithmeticians reckon unequal units; as for example, two armies, two oxen,
two very large things or two very small things. The party who are opposed
to them insist that every unit in ten thousand must be the same as every
other unit.
PROTARCHUS: Undoubtedly there is, as you say, a great difference among the
votaries of the science; and there may be reasonably supposed to be two
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: instrument usable for such a purpose that he cares to prescribe. Such
an Act is not a legislative phenomenon but a psychopathic one. Its
effect on the White Slave Traffic was, of course, to distract public
attention from its real cause and from the people who really profit by
it to imaginary "foreign scoundrels," and to secure a monopoly of its
organization for women.
And all this evil is made possible by the schoolmaster with his cane
and birch, by the parents getting rid as best they can of the nuisance
of children making noise and mischief in the house, and by the denial
to children of the elementary rights of human beings.
The first man who enslaved and "broke in" an animal with a whip would
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