| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our
shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only
our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon
us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever
yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though
often and earnestly invited to it.
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like
expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that
there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them
into practice.
But, as to my self, having been wearied out for many years with
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: it is quite natural and RIGHT for Mrs Warren to choose what is,
according to her lights, the least immoral alternative, it is
none the less infamous of society to offer such alternatives.
For the alternatives offered are not morality and immorality, but
two sorts of immorality. The man who cannot see that starvation,
overwork, dirt, and disease are as anti-social as prostitution--
that they are the vices and crimes of a nation, and not merely
its misfortunes--is (to put it as politely as possible) a
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
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: Whose frothy mouth bepainted all with red, 901
Like milk and blood being mingled both together,
A second fear through all her sinews spread,
Which madly hurries her she knows not whither: 904
This way she runs, and now she will no further,
But back retires to rate the boar for murther.
A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways,
She treads the path that she untreads again; 908
Her more than haste is mated with delays,
Like the proceedings of a drunken brain,
Full of respects, yet nought at all respecting,
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