| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law
that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those
who put him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine
shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at
large again.
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of
the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance
it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out.
If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a
crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider
whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: again, with a fish in his beak. If he had fallen on your head,
with that beak of his, he would have split it open. I have heard
of men catching gannets by tying a fish on a board, and letting it
float; and when the gannet strikes at it he drives his bill into
the board, and cannot get it out.
But is not that cruel?
I think so. Gannets are of no use, for eating, or anything else.
What a noise! It is quite deafening. And what are those black
birds about, who croak like crows, or parrots?
Look at them. Some have broad bills, with a white stripe on it,
and cry something like the moor-hens at home. Those are razor-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: to dishonor it, he took my New Testament word for word as it was
written, and removed my prefaces and glosses, replacing them with
his own. Then he published my New Testament under his name! Dear
Children, how it pained me when his prince in a detestable preface
condemned my work and forbid all from reading Luther's New
Testament, while at the same time commending the Bungler's New
Testament to be read - even though it was the very same one Luther
had written!
So no one thinks I am lying, put Luther's and the Bungler's New
Testaments side by side and compare them. You will see who did
the translation for both. He has patched it in places and
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