| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: are lots of things to be seen to." There had been that in her
voice which had forbidden discussion, and it was a tone to which
she was forced to have recourse more than once during the
following days when it seemed to her that all her friends were in
a conspiracy to persuade her to a hasty, ill-advised upheaval.
Nothing, she resolved, should push her from this farm or into
final decisions until a year had passed. She must have something
to which she could cling if it were nothing more than a familiar
routine. Without that to sustain and support her, she felt she
could never meet the responsibilities which had suddenly
descended, with such a terrific impact, upon her shoulders.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: see Mrs. Chang Hsu who was suffering from a nervous breakdown due
to worry and sleeplessness. On inquiry I discovered that her two
daughters had been taken into the palace as concubines of the
Emperor Kuang Hsu. Her friends feared a mental breakdown, and
begged me to do all I could for her. She took me by the hand,
pulled me down on the brick bed beside her, and told me in a
pathetic way how both of her daughters had been taken from her in
a single day.
" 'But they have been taken into the palace,' I urged, to try to
comfort her, 'and I have heard that the Emperor is very fond of
your eldest daughter, and wanted to make her his empress.'
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: we are all liable to the same errors, all alike the Slaves
of our respective Dimensional prejudices, as one of your
Spaceland poets has said --
'One touch of Nature makes all worlds akin'."
[Note: The Author desires me to add, that the misconception of some
of his critics on this matter has induced him to insert in his
dialogue with the Sphere, certain remarks which have a bearing
on the point in question, and which he had previously omitted
as being tedious and unnecessary.]
On this point the defence of the Square seems to me to be impregnable.
I wish I could say that his answer to the second (or moral) objection
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
