| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: one's own views, this acceptance of the classics does a great deal
of harm. The uncritical admiration of the Bible and Shakespeare in
England is an instance of what I mean. With regard to the Bible,
considerations of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter,
so that I need not dwell upon the point. But in the case of
Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public really see neither
the beauties nor the defects of his plays. If they saw the
beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama;
and if they saw the defects, they would not object to the
development of the drama either. The fact is, the public make use
of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: that no public conveyance would take us, or any
other slave, as a passenger, without our master's
consent. This consent could never be obtained to
pass into a free State. My wife's being muffled in
the poultices, &c., furnished a plausible excuse for
avoiding general conversation, of which most
Yankee travellers are passionately fond.
There are a large number of free negroes residing
in the southern States; but in Georgia (and I
believe in all the slave States,) every coloured per-
son's complexion is prima facie evidence of his
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Depart into the winds away, believe
The soul no less is shed abroad and dies
More quickly far, more quickly is dissolved
Back to its primal bodies, when withdrawn
From out man's members it has gone away.
For, sure, if body (container of the same
Like as a jar), when shivered from some cause,
And rarefied by loss of blood from veins,
Cannot for longer hold the soul, how then
Thinkst thou it can be held by any air-
A stuff much rarer than our bodies be?
Of The Nature of Things |
