| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: thrust 'em back into their melancholy.
'"You are an unfaithful shepherd, jack," I says. "Take a bat"
(which we call a stick in Sussex) "and kill a rat if you die before
sunrise. 'Twill save your people."
'"Aye, aye. Take a bat and kill a rat," he says ten times over,
like a child, which moved 'em to ungovernable motions of that
hysterical passion before mentioned, so that they laughed all, and
at least warmed their chill bloods at that very hour - one o'clock
or a little after - when the fires of life burn lowest. Truly there is a
time for everything; and the physician must work with it - ahem!
- or miss his cure. To be brief with you, I persuaded 'em, sick or
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: others to make an equal number of speeches. I would except Simmias the
Theban, but all the rest are far behind you. And now I do verily believe
that you have been the cause of another.
PHAEDRUS: That is good news. But what do you mean?
SOCRATES: I mean to say that as I was about to cross the stream the usual
sign was given to me,--that sign which always forbids, but never bids, me
to do anything which I am going to do; and I thought that I heard a voice
saying in my ear that I had been guilty of impiety, and that I must not go
away until I had made an atonement. Now I am a diviner, though not a very
good one, but I have enough religion for my own use, as you might say of a
bad writer--his writing is good enough for him; and I am beginning to see
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the
Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of
feudalism.
It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For
while under the present system a very large number of people can
lead lives of a certain amount of freedom and expression and
happiness, under an industrial-barrack system, or a system of
economic tyranny, nobody would be able to have any such freedom at
all. It is to be regretted that a portion of our community should
be practically in slavery, but to propose to solve the problem by
enslaving the entire community is childish. Every man must be left
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