| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion
of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it those
truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all
modestly refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is
perhaps better to be silent.
I come next to Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS, a book of singular
service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me,
blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical
illusion, and, having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set
me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original
and manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book for
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: labour of others. The need for her physical labour having gone, and mental
industry not having taken its place, she bedecked and scented her person,
or had it bedecked and scented for her, she lay upon her sofa, or drove or
was carried out in her vehicle, and, loaded with jewels, she sought by
dissipations and amusements to fill up the inordinate blank left by the
lack of productive activity. And as the hand whitened and frame softened,
till, at last, the very duties of motherhood, which were all the
constitution of her life left her, became distasteful, and, from the
instant when her infant came damp from her womb, it passed into the hands
of others, to be tended and reared by them; and from youth to age her
offspring often owed nothing to her personal toil. In many cases so
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: When you once begin there is no end of them, and they spring from an
uncritical philosophy after all. 'The proper study of mankind is man;' and
he is a far more complex and wonderful being than the serpent Typho.
Socrates as yet does not know himself; and why should he care to know about
unearthly monsters? Engaged in such conversation, they arrive at the
plane-tree; when they have found a convenient resting-place, Phaedrus pulls
out the speech and reads:--
The speech consists of a foolish paradox which is to the effect that the
non-lover ought to be accepted rather than the lover--because he is more
rational, more agreeable, more enduring, less suspicious, less hurtful,
less boastful, less engrossing, and because there are more of them, and for
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