| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: perplexity. We readily acknowledge that a whole has many parts, that the
continuous is also the divisible, that in all objects of sense there is a
one and many, and that a like principle may be applied to analogy to purely
intellectual conceptions. If we attend to the meaning of the words, we are
compelled to admit that two contradictory statements are true. But the
antinomy is so familiar as to be scarcely observed by us. Our sense of the
contradiction, like Plato's, only begins in a higher sphere, when we speak
of necessity and free-will, of mind and body, of Three Persons and One
Substance, and the like. The world of knowledge is always dividing more
and more; every truth is at first the enemy of every other truth. Yet
without this division there can be no truth; nor any complete truth without
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: that I have been refused a lodging. Often and often have I planned
what I should do if such a misadventure happened to me again. And
nothing is easier to plan. But to put in execution, with the heart
boiling at the indignity? Try it; try it only once; and tell me
what you did.
It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six hours
of police surveillance (such as I have had), or one brutal
rejection from an inn-door, change your views upon the subject like
a course of lectures. As long as you keep in the upper regions,
with all the world bowing to you as you go, social arrangements
have a very handsome air; but once get under the wheels, and you
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of
their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present
deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional
grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and
easy method of making these children sound and useful members of
the common-wealth, would deserve so well of the publick, as to
have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only
for the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater
extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a
certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to
A Modest Proposal |
