| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: in England, will be still with us; because, peace with trade, is preferable
to war without it. And if this offer be not accepted, other courts
may be applied to.
On these grounds I rest the matter. And as no offer hath
yet been made to refute the doctrine contained in the former
editions of this pamphlet, it is a negative proof, that either
the doctrine cannot be refuted, or, that the party in favour
of it are too numerous to be opposed. WHEREFORE, instead
of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity;
let each of us, hold out to his neighbour the hearty hand of
friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of
Common Sense |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: be instinctively docile, and keep it in a condition of unremitted
tutelage under the nurserymaid, the governess, the preparatory school,
the secondary school, and the university, until it is an adult, you
will produce, not a self-reliant, free, fully matured human being, but
a grown-up schoolboy or schoolgirl, capable of nothing in the way of
original or independent action except outbursts of naughtiness in the
women and blackguardism in the men. That is exactly what we get at
present in our rich and consequently governing classes: they pass
from juvenility to senility without ever touching maturity except in
body. The classes which cannot afford this sustained tutelage are
notably more self-reliant and grown-up: an office boy of fifteen is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to
address you as you would have liked me to do, weeping and wailing and
lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed
to hear from others, and which, as I maintain, are unworthy of me. I
thought at the time that I ought not to do anything common or mean when in
danger: nor do I now repent of the style of my defence; I would rather die
having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For
neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use every way of
escaping death. Often in battle there can be no doubt that if a man will
throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may
escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death,
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