The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: black men and brown men and yellow men, and, no matter what its
political convictions may be, that there are Monarchists and
Republicans and Positivists, Socialists and Unsocialists, so it should
know that there are Christians and Mahometans and Buddhists and
Shintoists and so forth, and that they are on the average just as
honest and well-behaved as its own father. For example, it should not
be told that Allah is a false god set up by the Turks and Arabs, who
will all be damned for taking that liberty; but it should be told that
many English people think so, and that many Turks and Arabs think the
converse about English people. It should be taught that Allah is
simply the name by which God is known to Turks and Arabs, who are just
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died
from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says
Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own
impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims
And this word "love," which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another
And not in me: I am myself alone.
Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce
disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he
discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: Autumn, Charming Flower, Jade Pure, Lucky Pearl, Precious
Harp, Covet Spring; and the parent's way of speaking of
his little girl, when not wishing to be self-depreciative, is to
call her his "Thousand ounces of gold."
The names given to boys are quite as humiliating or as
elevating as those given to girls. He may be Number One,
Two or Three, Pig, Dog or Flea, or he may be like Wu
T'ing Fang a "Fragrant Palace," or like Li Hung Chang, an
"Illustrious Bird" or "Learned Treatise."
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