| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: but morally rebellious. Were there ever such unthinkable
deities as parents? I would give a great deal to know what,
in nine cases out of ten, is the child's unvarnished feeling.
A sense of past cajolery; a sense of personal attraction, at
best very feeble; above all, I should imagine, a sense of
terror for the untried residue of mankind go to make up the
attraction that he feels. No wonder, poor little heart, with
such a weltering world in front of him, if he clings to the
hand he knows! The dread irrationality of the whole affair,
as it seems to children, is a thing we are all too ready to
forget. "O, why," I remember passionately wondering, "why can
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: speaking generally, our government was an aristocracy--a form of government
which receives various names, according to the fancies of men, and is
sometimes called democracy, but is really an aristocracy or government of
the best which has the approval of the many. For kings we have always had,
first hereditary and then elected, and authority is mostly in the hands of
the people, who dispense offices and power to those who appear to be most
deserving of them. Neither is a man rejected from weakness or poverty or
obscurity of origin, nor honoured by reason of the opposite, as in other
states, but there is one principle--he who appears to be wise and good is a
governor and ruler. The basis of this our government is equality of birth;
for other states are made up of all sorts and unequal conditions of men,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: begun. Some were fled and some were dead, and this was the end of that
fight. No, no, not of all the war. The Halakazi were worsted in the
field, but many lived to win the great cave, and there the work must
be finished. Thither, then, went the Slaughterer presently, with such
of his impi as was left to him. Alas! many were killed; but how could
they have died better than in that fight? Also those who were left
were as good as all, for now they knew that they should not be
overcome easily while Axe and Club still led the way.
Now they stood before a hill, measuring, perhaps, three thousand paces
round its base. It was of no great height, and yet unclimbable, for,
after a man had gone up a little way, the sides of it were sheer,
Nada the Lily |
