| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: ignorance into unrestrained and uncontrolled fertility.
In pointing out the limitations and fallacies of the orthodox Marxian
opinion, my purpose is not to depreciate the efforts of the Socialists
aiming to create a new society, but rather to emphasize what seems to
me the greatest and most neglected truth of our day:--Unless sexual
science is incorporated as an integral part of world-statesmanship and
the pivotal importance of Birth Control is recognized in any program
of reconstruction, all efforts to create a new world and a new
civilization are foredoomed to failure.
We can hope for no advance until we attain a new conception of sex,
not as a merely propagative act, not merely as a biological necessity
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: where small rooms for servants had been multiplied, abounded in
nooks and corners, in closets and passages, in the ramifications
especially of an ample back staircase over which he leaned, many a
time, to look far down - not deterred from his gravity even while
aware that he might, for a spectator, have figured some solemn
simpleton playing at hide-and-seek. Outside in fact he might
himself make that ironic RAPPROCHEMENT; but within the walls, and
in spite of the clear windows, his consistency was proof against
the cynical light of New York.
It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated consciousness of
his victim to become a real test for him; since he had quite put it
|
