| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: how soon it may be wanted?"
Mr. Elton was so hot and tired, that all this wit seemed thrown away.
His civilities to the other ladies must be paid; but his subsequent
object was to lament over himself for the heat he was suffering,
and the walk he had had for nothing.
"When I got to Donwell," said he, "Knightley could not be found.
Very odd! very unaccountable! after the note I sent him this morning,
and the message he returned, that he should certainly be at home
till one."
"Donwell!" cried his wife.--"My dear Mr. E., you have not been
to Donwell!--You mean the Crown; you come from the meeting at the Crown."
Emma |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: which had not yet learned to distinguish words from things. Socrates
replies in effect that words have an independent existence; thus
anticipating the solution of the mediaeval controversy of Nominalism and
Realism. He is aware too that languages exist in various degrees of
perfection, and that the analysis of them can only be carried to a certain
point. 'If we could always, or almost always, use likenesses, which are
the appropriate expressions, that would be the most perfect state of
language.' These words suggest a question of deeper interest than the
origin of language; viz. what is the ideal of language, how far by any
correction of their usages existing languages might become clearer and more
expressive than they are, more poetical, and also more logical; or whether
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: hopelessly Private Person.
The notion that Mrs Warren must be a fiend is only an example of
the violence and passion which the slightest reference to sex
arouses in undisciplined minds, and which makes it seem natural
for our lawgivers to punish silly and negligible indecencies with
a ferocity unknown in dealing with, for example, ruinous
financial swindling. Had my play been titled Mr Warren's
Profession, and Mr Warren been a bookmaker, nobody would have
expected me to make him a villain as well. Yet gambling is a
vice, and bookmaking an institution, for which there is
absolutely nothing to be said. The moral and economic evil done
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