The chief event of this week is our own first appearance.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, November 23rd 1911
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The beginning of the New Year will serve as a sufficient apology for stating what one considers to be the unique and supremely important task: one for the execution of which we can see no evidence of minds other than our own being forthcoming.
The Egoist, Volume 2 Number 1, January 1st 1915
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Here at the outset it would perhaps be usual to make an apology for the audacity, excessive in an amateur, which presumes to engage with a subject so vast and far-reaching. In others, however, apologizing in a preface has never seemed to me other than a dubious merit: an attempt to wheedle us into issuing in their favor a blank cheque drawn on our fund of forbearance.
The Egoist, Volume 3 Number 7, July 1st 1916
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In the midst of all this there comes a cry that woman is an individual, and that because she is an individual she must be set free. It would be nearer the truth to say that if she is an individual, she is free, and will act like those who are free.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, November 23rd 1911
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The opponents of the Freewomen are not actuated by spleen or stupidity, but by dread. This dread is well founded upon ages of experience with a being who, however well loved, has been known to be an inferior, and who has accepted all the conditions of inferiors. Women, women’s intelligence, and women’s judgments have always been regarded with more or less secret contempt.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, November 23rd 1911
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How women have fallen into this position is a moot point. It is yet to be decided whether they ever did fall – where man and women have not been, from their creation, master and servant. If otherwise, and if woman did “fall,” the reason why is yet to be assigned. It is quite beside the point to say women were “crushed” down. If they were not “down” in themselves – i.e., weaker in mind – no equal force could have crushed them “down.”
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, November 23rd 1911
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The cult of the Suffragist takes its stand upon the weakness and dejectedness of the conditions of women. The cult of the Suffragist would say, “Are women not weak? Are women not crushed down? Are women not in need of protection? Therefore, give them the means wherewith they may be protected.” Those of the cult of the Freewoman, however, while granting this in part, would go on to say, “In spite of our position, we feel within us the stirrings of new powers and growing strength. If we can secure scope, opportunity, and responsibility, we feel we can make realizable to the world a new revelation of spiritual consciousness. We feel we can produce new evidence of creative force, which, when allowed its course, will encompass developments sufficiently great to constitute a higher development in the evolution of the human race and of human achievement.”
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, November 23rd 1911
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What are the responsibilities of the father? Well, that is his business. Perhaps the State will have something to say to him, but the Freewoman’s concern is to see to it that she shall be in a position to bear children if she wants them without soliciting maintenance from any man, whoever he may be; and this she can only do if she is earning money for herself, or is provided for out of some common fund for a limited time.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, November 23rd 1911
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Imagine the circumstances! The man would be compelled by law to pay a portion of his salary to a person whom he is prevented by law from dismissing, and who is prevented by law from securing release. The paid person may be satisfactory or not. If unsatisfactory, what redress is there for the employer? No redress! but a possible remedy in corporal punishment, such as is administered to soldiers in barracks in similar circumstances. And the employee against a tyrannical employer? No power to refuse to sell her labor! power only to form a trade union of paid wives! The entire theory is ludicrous in its absurdity. No! Personal relationships between equals must be entered into on terms of equality.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, November 23rd 1911
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It is from a full recognition of the fact that feminist doctrine is a hard one for women, that the path of the Freewoman will be beset with difficulties, with temptations both from within and without, that we are led to the further recognition of the futility of preaching it to the women who are essentially ordinary women, who do not already bear in themselves the stamp of the individual.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, November 23rd 1911
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This is the epoch of the gadding mind. The mind “not at home” but given to something else, occupied with alien “causes” is of the normal order, and as such must be held accountable for that condemning of the lonely occupant of the home – the Self – which is the characteristic of the common mind.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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Oh Freedom, subtle deceiver, what chains are forged and riveted in thy Name.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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Hence, the popularity of the “Cause” which provides the Ideal to which the “desired self-sacrifice can be offered.” The greater the sacrifice the Idol can accept the greater is it as a “Cause,” whether it be liberty, equality, fraternity, honesty or what not. If ten thousand starving men, with their tens of thousands of dependents, starve in the Cause of Honesty, how great is Honesty. If a woman throws away her life for freedom, how great is freedom. And no mistake.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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The fat man is just as likely to endow the lean scolders as is the Almighty – none at all. He is satisfied in the knowledge that they can achieve their own endowment as he and his achieved theirs, by taking from yielding hands.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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High finance – a game of sport best played like cricket, with limited numbers.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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The law of honesty is the first precept written out on the Iron Mask. Honesty is a rule of convenience whose purpose is to keep back the crowd from the excellent game of the select few.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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The law is not for those who make it. It is for the dispossessed only.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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There is only one thing the down-trodden with retained dignity can do, and that is to Get Up.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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There is only one person concerned in the freeing of individuals: and that is the person who wears and feels and resents the shackles. Shackles must be burst off: if they are cut away from outside, they will immediately reform, as those whose cause is “our poor sisters” and “poor brothers” will find.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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“Freedom” presumes a state and there is no state of being free; there is an activity of free-ing but the activity is limited by time to the duration of the act itself; the act completed, the free-ing is ended. To advance the concept of freedom as a reality is to attempt to give to that which has no meaning apart from expansion of a force, the laid-out, static quality of the objective world; it seeks to establish in space – in the static – that which has an existence only in time; of which the termination is the motive which engenders the beginning. There is no freedom and hence there can be no fight for it.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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So the patient advocates of “free states,” “free speech,” “free assemblage,” what are they but deluded children in the vicinity of forces they do not comprehend? If they want to assemble and speak without let or hindrance, let them increase their own power, their strength of arm until they can speak and meet as they will. But to ask for free speech and free meeting, what is it but an acknowledgement of tutelage, inferiority.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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Oh Freedom, subtle deceiver, what chains are forged and riveted in thy Name.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Unity, Justice, Truth, Humanity, Law, Mumbo-Jumbo, Mesopotamia, Abracadabra, Om-Tat-Sat. Intellectual concepts all – futile products of men who pursue their own shadow.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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A virile people turns to thought, creates a culture which promptly turns upon it to encompass its destruction. There has been as yet no exception in the history of mankind.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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“Causes” are the diversion of the feeble – of those who have lost the power of acting strongly from their own nature. They are for the titillation of the senses of the herd, and a person who can act strongly should shun all Cause-ites and their works. Strong natures, who act out their beliefs in their own person, not realizing that such grounds for actions as Causes proffer are in place only among those who having lost the instinct for action amuse themselves by words, occasionally are fascinated by the jargon, with consequences disastrous in the highest degree to themselves.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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There is something to be said for a “death as a spectacle,” but there is nothing to be said for “dying long drawn out” as an argument. There is no virtue in suffering: To be relying on pity as a main argument is the tactic of the weak.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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Understanding, however, is the fruit of making mistakes, and it is now clear that the “woman movement” must find its definition and activity in matters unrelated to voting “rights.”
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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A very limited number of individual women are emphasizing the fact that the first thing to be taken into account with regard to them is that they are individuals and can not be lumped together into a class, a sex, or a “movement.” They – this small number – regard themselves neither as wives, mothers, spinsters, women, nor men. They are themselves, each cut off from and differing from the rest. What each is and what each requires she proposes to find by looking into her own wants – not “class” or “race” wants – which explains her repudiation of “descriptions by function.” If primarily women are to regard themselves as Woman or as the Mother, their satisfactions as individuals would be subordinated to an external authority: the requirements of the development of Woman or Mother as such – Empty concepts again.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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The centre of the Universe lies in the desire of the individual, and the Universe for the individual has no meaning apart from their individual satisfactions, a means to an end.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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The few individual women before mentioned maintain that their only fitting description is that of Individual: Ends-in-themselves. They are Egoists. They are Autocrats, and government in their autocracy is vested in the Self which holds the reins in the kingdom of varying wants and desires, and which defines the resultant of these different forces as the Satisfaction of Itself. The intensive satisfaction of Self is for the individual the one goal in life.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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Intellect being limited to what it now is – any culture is premature. The people which evolves a too-early culture has as much chance of prospering as has the infant strictly dieted on green fruits.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Life is able to prejudge experience in the outer world, by means of Intellect as by a proxy. Life by Intellect can buy experience cheap where with instinct it bought it dear. It can therefore afford to buy more, as it has.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Intellect, like fire, is a good servant but a bad master, and its successes have given rise to the notion that intellectualization is a master-role in life.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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The historic record of human life on earth, is the tale of this bewilderment of Intellect faced with the phenomenon of life.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Science is a triumph; Art is a tragedy, for Art is the attempted tale of the Soul. Science is a correspondence; for that to which it relates, it is true. Art is a fake; it is the putting up of something else to save the trouble of finding out what is truly there.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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True Art would be the expression of the human soul through Intellect, and Intellect jibs at the task, because to tackle it is to be compelled to act in a medium with which it is wholly unfamiliar.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Liberty, Truth, Humanity, Justice, and the rest. The Soul squanders itself among them: the All spends itself on the Nothing. Not in vain do the lying thoughts take birth.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Intellect is far commoner than strength of being – Soul, to wit. Hence its presumption. Only when personality is strong is Rationalism put into its proper human relationship and only then do we get the creator of true art, the Light-bringer.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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When Intellect responds we shall have Art, the record of the Soul moving consciously in Light. The creation of Art is the supreme effort of Soul and Intellect.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Thought is delusion: thinking is a definite process: set in motion to liberate not thoughts but living impulses, not the fixed frame works of concepts, but self-directed force whose direction will be as unforeseeable as the individual- whose living soul it is – is solitary and unique; sole one of its kind; thinking’s effect is to liberate life ready for action, not to bind it up to construct a system. Good thinking would prevent the formation of thoughts, as a good machine minimizes waste.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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We will explain what we meant by saying that “Woman,” spelt with a capital, Woman-as-type, had no existence; that it is an empty concept and should be banished from language. We meant that there is no definite reality which can be substituted as that to which Woman corresponds, which is a thing and not an idea. If we take “female reproductive organs” away from this concept Woman, what have we left? Absolutely nothing, save a mountain of sentimental mush, such as we have when we take away the definite action of breaking through a barrier from the concept “Freedom.” Woman-as-type is reproduction-in-all-its stages personified, that is, a simple reality messed up into a fiction. It is as nearly related to the first amoeba as to any particular woman. Its notion is that of anything sploshing, something too big to contain itself: a bowl of dough worked on by the yeast.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Our quarrel with things in general is difficult to state in words for the precise reason that the biggest part of our quarrel is against words – against “thoughts.” It is a quarrel with human culture, with the kinds of labels put on things – or rather on living activities.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Pshaw! The fact is that we have had far too much of this “skirt” nonsense. We are weary of the sound of it. “Woman Movement” forsooth. Why does not someone start a “straight-nose movement,” or a “mole movement,” or any other movement based upon some accidental physical contoration? They would be as sensible as we who have run a “Skirts movement” which is the essential meaning of “woman movement.”
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Do we then repudiate sex, one asks? Again the questioner confuses the accidental outer with a real inner. Inner feeling, attracted impulse, occasionally enters the sphere of sex. But in itself feeling is sexless. It is not necessary to repudiate feeling or to harbor it; we can please ourselves regarding it.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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If men and women would try to turn their attention away from the infinitesimally small differences which distinguish them, as handsome people have to turn their attention away from their good looks, we should soon have heard the last of Man and Woman spelt with capitals, and the day of the individual would be at hand. And the measure of the individual would be not sex, but individual power.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Moreover we believe that the individuals of the future, if they are worth anything at all, will be as well able to look after themselves, as we are to look after ourselves. In short there may be glorious and radiant individuals in the dim future as there have been in the past: but they are no concern of ours. Our joy is not in them: their beauty is not ours.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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One point at least in our “attitude” has been caught – our “commonness.” It is cardinal, and we must insist on it. We are “common.” This does not mean, either on our lips, or on others, that we are like everybody else. Tout au contraire! It means that we are egoistic, individual, selfish. To be “common” with the “fine” means to be in the bonds of selfish motives and to see others in the same – not to be under sway of the fine concepts; the “noble” emotions; to be running amok of the whole cultural structure. And so we are. We are seeking our individual satisfactions, and find instruction in tracing out the ridiculous figure cut by those who are gadding about pretending to seek other peoples.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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The universe for us is divided into “Ourselves” and the “Others.” The Others are all mixed up one with the rest; like a returning bank holiday picnic, they are linked together all in a row. It is impossible to tell where one begins and the other leaves off. It is consequently impossible to differentiate.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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“Would not your Cause be better promoted… ?” Dear friends and readers, The New Freewoman has no Cause. The nearest approach to a Cause it desires to attain, is to destroy Causes, and for the doing of this it finds its reward and incentive in its own satisfaction.
The New Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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The New Freewoman is not for the advancement of Woman, but for the empowering of individuals – men and women; it is not to set women free, but to demonstrate the fact that “freeing” is the individual’s affair and must be done first-hand, and that individual power is the first step thereto; it is not to bring new thoughts to individuals, but to set the thinking mechanism to the task of destroying thoughts – to make plain that thinking has no merit in itself, but is a machine, of which the purpose is not to create something, but to liberate something: not to create thoughts but to set free life impulses.
The New Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 2, July 1st 1913
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Democracy is a weed of the tuber order. When its visible leaves are lopped off, the underground root remains strong as before. Proof that the worship of democracy is just the apotheosis of tyranny, that democracy is tyranny erected into a cult, does not make patent the absurdity of the conclusion that democracy is the gospel of the free.
The New Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 3, July 15th 1913
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Democracy viewed on its own merits of course reveals itself almost as a mathematical error. Starting from an aversion towards the tyranny of One – the historic Tyrant – the impulse towards democracy has spread tyranny – i.e. government – through a wider area, through oligarchy, and plutocracy, the Few, and the Rich, and presses onwards as to a desired goal, to the government of All by All.
The New Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 3, July 15th 1913
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Democracy is a special form of government, that is, a particular form of according to some or all the privilege of meddling with the lives of the rest.
The New Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 3, July 15th 1913
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Observation of individual men would never have led to the formulation of the static conceptions upon which the democratic edifice is founded, such as justice, equality, fraternity, order. These are based not on the traits of living men but upon schemes for the aggrandizement of mere thought-creations – “humanity”- “mankind.” Indeed the “characteristics of men” – are something to be explained away, something to be overcome in the interests of “mankind.”
The New Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 3, July 15th 1913
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The “EGO,” additionally to what is connoted by the WORLD-EXCLUSIVE “I,” includes also the rest of the universe, spiritual and material. Therefore from the “EGO” nothing can be discriminated as distinct or separate. It is the Universe in which “ALL” is comprehended and unified. Beyond, no room is left for feeling, thought, breath, or word. Among the items contained within it must be:
(a) That which is signified by the normal subject “I” (however that may hereinafter be defined).
(b) Any particularized feeling which by means of the Predicate “PERCEIVE” can be comprehended under the head of grammatical OBJECT.
(c) Any particularized form of activity denoted by PREDICATES additionally to that of the elemental predicate “PERCEIVE.”
(d) All that is signified by EXTENSIONS of PREDICATES: therefore, the relations of SPACE and TIME.
(e) All RELATIONS between THINGS, therefore: The “ORDER OF NATURE.”
(f) All GODS OR GOD (however these may be defined).
(g) All supposed “EGOS.”
Plainly this “EGO” is a conception not recognized by common language. Its nearest conception in everyday language is “UNIVERSE.”
The Egoist, Volume 3 Number 9, September 1916
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Life has no law, save that of its own being. It is not to be interpreted in accordance with laws of matter, a fact of which women are more aware than men, thanks to the freedom from the over-great struggle with the world of matter – of dead resistance – from which they have induced men to relieve them.
– DM quoted in Dora Marsden and Early Modernism by Bruce Clarke, page 78.
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Women will push open the door of the super-world.
– DM quoted in Dora Marsden and Early Modernism by Bruce Clarke, page 122.
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She has pinioned herself with words – words – words, and these, not her own.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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The thrill is the memory, the aroma of far-off fair deeds: the swoon is the suspension of intellect which allows vague association to make these deeds appear in part as one’s own. Deeds, mark you, are definite things.
The Freewoman, Volume 1 Number 1, June 15th 1913
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My universes = My body plus My external world.
Egoism makes this important alteration upon transporting the terms:
My universe minus My body = 0.
The Egoist, Volume 6 Number 3, July 1919
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