| 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: what is to guide the child before its first confirmation? Not mere
orders, because orders must have a sanction of some sort or why should
the child obey them? If, as a Secularist, you refuse to teach any
sanction, you must say "You will be punished if you disobey." "Yes,"
says the child to itself, "if I am found out; but wait until your back
is turned and I will do as I like, and lie about it." There can be no
objective punishment for successful fraud; and as no espionage can
cover the whole range of a child's conduct, the upshot is that the
child becomes a liar and schemer with an atrophied conscience. And a
good many of the orders given to it are not obeyed after all. Thus
the Secularist who is not a fool is forced to appeal to the child's
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: impossible; the price is raised so high that it won't pay," added
the cross, toothless old man. "They twist us into ropes, worse
than during serfdom."
"I think as you do, and I count it a sin to possess land, so I
wish to give it away," said Nekhludoff.
"Well, that's a good thing," said the old man, with curls like
Angelo's "Moses," evidently thinking that Nekhludoff meant to let
the land.
"I have come here because I no longer wish to possess any land,
and now we must consider the best way of dividing it."
"Just give it to the peasants, that's all," said the cross,
Resurrection |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: but it was not about the old house, for they could not remember it, so many
years had passed--so many that the little boy had grown up to a whole man,
yes, a clever man, and a pleasure to his parents; and he had just been
married, and, together with his little wife, had come to live in the house
here, where the garden was; and he stood by her there whilst she planted a
field-flower that she found so pretty; she planted it with her little hand,
and pressed the earth around it with her fingers. Oh! what was that? She had
stuck herself. There sat something pointed, straight out of the soft mould.
It was--yes, guess! It was the pewter soldier, he that was lost up at the old
man's, and had tumbled and turned about amongst the timber and the rubbish,
and had at last laid for many years in the ground.
Fairy Tales |
