| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: whose religious instincts might be entirely rudimentary; or the German, who
could not distinguish one note from another; and the society as a whole
would be an irremediable loser, in one of the heaviest of all forms of
social loss--the loss of the full use of the highest capacities of all its
members.
It may be that with sexes as with races, the subtlest physical difference
between them may have their fine mental correlatives; but no abstract
consideration of the human body in relation to its functions of sex can, in
the present state of our knowledge, show us what intellectual capacities
tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing in the present or past
condition of male and female give us more than the very faintest possible
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: of American society, which was distributed over the measureless
expanse in a variety of sedentary attitudes, and appeared to consist
largely of pretty young girls, dressed as if for a fete champetre,
swaying to and fro in rocking chairs, fanning themselves with large
straw fans, and enjoying an enviable exemption from social cares.
Lord Lambeth had a theory, which it might be interesting to trace
to its origin, that it would be not only agreeable, but easily possible,
to enter into relations with one of these young ladies; and his companion
(as he had done a couple of days before) found occasion to check
the young nobleman's colloquial impulses.
"You had better take care," said Percy Beaumont, "or you will have an offended
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Till it passed the topmost branches;
And behold! the wooden dishes
All were changed to shells of scarlet!
And behold! the earthen kettles
All were changed to bowls of silver!
And the roof-poles of the wigwam
Were as glittering rods of silver,
And the roof of bark upon them
As the shining shards of beetles.
"Then Osseo gazed around him,
And he saw the nine fair sisters,
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