| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: exist in this waste country, living, as he does, at such a
distance from mankind? and if he has the means of securing
occasional assistance, will not the very suspicion that he is
possessed of them, expose him to plunder and assassination by
some of our unsettled neighbours?"
"But you forget that they say he is a warlock," said Nancy
Ilderton.
"And, if his magic diabolical should fail him," rejoined her
sister, "I would have him trust to his magic natural, and thrust
his enormous head, and most preternatural visage, out at his door
or window, full in view of the assailants. The boldest robber
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: Running the Rapids
And now, can you form to yourselves a clear concept of what it
means to society that practically all its moral teaching should
be in the hands of men who are incapable of clean, straight
thinking? That all the intellectual prestige of the Church should
be lent to the support of vagueness, futility, and deliberate
evasion? Here we are, all of us, caught in the most terrific
social crisis of history; I search for a metaphor to picture our
position, and I recall a canoe-trip in the wilds of Ontario,
hundreds of miles down a long swift river. You sit in the bow of
the canoe, your partner in the stern, watching ahead; and there
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: all men, judged by the moral standard which they apply to others and
by which they justify their punishment of others, are fools and
scoundrels, does not date from the Dark Lady complication: he seems
to have been born with it. If in The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer
Night's Dream the persons of the drama are not quite so ready for
treachery and murder as Laertes and even Hamlet himself (not to
mention the procession of ruffians who pass through the latest plays)
it is certainly not because they have any more regard for law or
religion. There is only one place in Shakespear's plays where the
sense of shame is used as a human attribute; and that is where Hamlet
is ashamed, not of anything he himself has done, but of his mother's
|
