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Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946

"First and Last Things"

Many things had been
suggested, sword-play and tests that verged on torture, climbing in
giddy places and the like, before this was chosen. Partly, it is to
ensure good training and sturdiness of body and mind, but partly also,
it is to draw the minds of the Samurai for a space from the insistent
details of life, from the intricate arguments and the fretting effort to
work, from personal quarrels and personal affections and the things of
the heated room. Out they must go, clean out of the world..."
These passages will at least serve to present the Samurai idea and the
idea of common Rule of conduct it embodied.
In the "Modern Utopia" I discuss also a lesser Rule and the modification
of the Rule for women and the relation to the order of what I call the
poietic types, those types whose business in life seems to be rather to
experience and express than to act and effectually do. For those things
I must refer the reader to the book itself. Together with a sentence I
have put in italics above, they serve to show that even when I was
devising these Samurai I was not unmindful of the defects that are
essential to such a scheme.


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