| 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: is a violation of the creature's right to live, and therefore must not
be allowed. And then at once arises the danger into which morality
has led us: the danger of persecution. One Christian spreading his
doctrines may seem more mischievous than a dozen thieves: throw him
therefore to the lions. A lying or disobedient child may corrupt a
whole generation and make human Society impossible: therefore thrash
the vice out of him. And so on until our whole system of abortion,
intimidation, tyranny, cruelty and the rest is in full swing again.
The Common Sense of Toleration
The real safeguard against this is the dogma of Toleration. I need
not here repeat the compact treatise on it which I prepared for the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: to the contacts.
True.
Whatever is the whole number of things, the contacts will be always one
less.
True.
But if there be only one, and not two, there will be no contact?
How can there be?
And do we not say that the others being other than the one are not one and
have no part in the one?
True.
Then they have no number, if they have no one in them?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: le cure, and Monsieur and Madame Galardon. It was one of those
interminable provincial dinners, where you sit at table from five to
nine o'clock. Madame Tiphaine had introduced into Provins the Parisian
custom of taking leave as soon as coffee had been served. On this
occasion she had company at home and was anxious to get away. The
Rogrons accompanied her husband and herself to the street door, and
when they returned to the salon, disconcerted at not being able to
keep their chief guests, the rest of the party were preparing to
imitate Madame Tiphaine's fashion with cruel provincial promptness.
"They won't see our salon lighted up," said Sylvie, "and that's the
show of the house."
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