| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: our elders; for we are still young--too young to determine such a matter.
And now let us go, as we were intending, and hear Protagoras; and when we
have heard what he has to say, we may take counsel of others; for not only
is Protagoras at the house of Callias, but there is Hippias of Elis, and,
if I am not mistaken, Prodicus of Ceos, and several other wise men.
To this we agreed, and proceeded on our way until we reached the vestibule
of the house; and there we stopped in order to conclude a discussion which
had arisen between us as we were going along; and we stood talking in the
vestibule until we had finished and come to an understanding. And I think
that the door-keeper, who was a eunuch, and who was probably annoyed at the
great inroad of the Sophists, must have heard us talking. At any rate,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: conduce to your improvement, I concurred with your mother's desire to
keep it secret. But since I find she turns it to a wrong use, I must
now declare you have been of age these three months.
TONY. Of age! Am I of age, father?
HARDCASTLE. Above three months.
TONY. Then you'll see the first use I'll make of my liberty. (Taking
MISS NEVILLE's hand.) Witness all men by these presents, that I,
Anthony Lumpkin, Esquire, of BLANK place, refuse you, Constantia
Neville, spinster, of no place at all, for my true and lawful wife. So
Constance Neville may marry whom she pleases, and Tony Lumpkin is his
own man again.
She Stoops to Conquer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a
foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it
is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.
What makes this duty the more urgent is that fact that the
country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.
Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions,
in his chapter on the "Duty of Submission to Civil
Government," resolves all civil obligation into expediency;
and he proceeds to say that "so long as the interest of the
whole society requires it, that it, so long as the established
government cannot be resisted or changed without public
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
