| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount
of property, both here and in England to little Pearl, the
daughter of Hester Prynne.
CONCLUSION 315
So Pearl -- the elf child -- the demon offspring, as some people
The Scarlet Letter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: and let the health and the lives of the local poor be that 'local
interest' which you are bound by your election to defend? Do you
confess your ignorance of the subject? Then know, sir, that you
are unfit, at this point of the nineteenth century, to be a member
of the British Senate. You go thither to make laws 'for the
preservation of life and property.' You confess yourself ignorant
of those physical laws, stronger and wider than any which you can
make, upon which all human life depends, by infringing which the
whole property of a district is depreciated." Again, what might
not the "religious world," and the public opinion of "professing
Christians," have done in the last twenty--ay, in the last three
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: God requires of him; by the latter I could only add to that paralysis of
superstitious fear, which is already but too common among us, and but
too likely to hinder us from doing our duty manfully against our real
foes, whether it be pestilence at home or tyranny abroad.
These last words lead me to another subject, on which I am bound to say
a few words. I have, at the end of these Lectures, made some allusion
to the present war. To have entered further into political questions
would have been improper in the place where those Lectures were
delivered: but I cannot refrain from saying here something more on this
matter; and that, first, because all political questions have their real
root in moral and spiritual ones, and not (as too many fancy) in
|
