| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: race.)
That even one individual in a society should be debarred from undertaking
that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes an unnecessary
deficit in the general social assets. That one male Froebel should be
prohibited or hampered in his labour as an educator of infancy, on the
ground that infantile instruction was the field of the female; that one
female with gifts in the direction of state administration, should be
compelled to instruct an infants' school, perhaps without the slightest
gift for so doing, is a running to waste of social life-blood.
Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, is
essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be determined.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: of believers, and take for learned works the arguments of virtual
theologians.
2. The Theory of Fatalism in respect of the Revolution.
Advocates and detractors of the Revolution often admit the
fatality of revolutionary events. This theory is well
synthetised in the following passage from the History of the
Revolution, by Emile Olivier:--
``No man could oppose it. The blame belongs neither to those who
perished nor to those who survived; there was no individual force
capable of changing the elements and of foreseeing the events
which were born of the nature of things and circumstances.''
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: circumstances in which we are placed are very hard. Roguin has carried
off a hundred thousand francs of mine; therefore, my half of the
property costs me five hundred thousand francs instead of four hundred
thousand. Roguin has also carried off two hundred and forty thousand
francs of Birotteau's. What would you do in my place, Monsieur Lebas?
Stand in my skin for a moment and view the case. Give me your
attention. Say that we are engaged in a transaction on equal shares;
you provide the money for your share, I give bills for mine; I offer
them to you, and you undertake, purely out of kindness, to convert
them into money. You learn that I, Claparon,--banker, rich, respected
(I accept all the virtues under the sun),--that the virtuous Claparon
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
