| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: are absolutely destitute of hygienic conditions. There are
schools mixed up with hospitals, with cemeteries, with slaughter
houses, with stables. One school forms the entrance to a
cemetery, and the corpses are placed on the master's table while
the last responses are being said. There is a school into which
the children cannot enter until the animals have been sent out to
pasture. Some are so small that as soon as the warm weather
begins the boys faint for want of air and ventilation. One school
is a manure-heap in process of fermentation, and one of the local
authorities has said that in this way the children are warmer in
winter. One school in Cataluna adjoins the prison. Another, in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: deep into the heart of a race, and have become as fixed to them, as private
property is to ourselves. He knows that this latter institution is not
more than four or five thousand years old: may not the end revert to the
beginning? In our own age even Utopias affect the spirit of legislation,
and an abstract idea may exercise a great influence on practical politics.
The objections that would be generally urged against Plato's community of
property, are the old ones of Aristotle, that motives for exertion would be
taken away, and that disputes would arise when each was dependent upon all.
Every man would produce as little and consume as much as he liked. The
experience of civilized nations has hitherto been adverse to Socialism.
The effort is too great for human nature; men try to live in common, but
The Republic |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: upon us; he'll fulfill the old Proverb: Set beggars a
horse-back, and they'll ride.--A, welliday for my Cow!
such as he hath made us come behind hand: we had
never pawned our Cow else to pay our rent.
SEELY.
Well, Joan, he'll come this way: and by God's dickers,
I'll tell him roundly of it, and if he were ten Lords: a
shall know that I had not my Cheese and my Bacon for
nothing.
WIFE.
Do you remember, husband, how he would mooch up
|
