| 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: middle-class respectability, based on current dogma, and handed down
to the populace with benign condescension, sex education is a waste of
time and effort. Such education cannot in any true sense set up as a
standard the ideal morality and behavior of the respectable middle-
class and then make the effort to induce all other members of society,
especially the working classes, to conform to their taboos. Such a
method is not only confusing, but, in the creation of strain and
hysteria and an unhealthy concentration upon moral conduct, results in
positive injury. To preach a negative and colorless ideal of chastity
to young men and women is to neglect the primary duty of awakening
their intelligence, their responsibility, their self-reliance and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: door of the inn and gossiped with two labourers about brickmaking, and
motor cars, and the cricket of last year. And in the sky a faint new
crescent, blue and vague as a distant Alp, sank westward over the sun.
The next day I returned to Cavor. "I am coming," I said. "I've been a
little out of order, that's all."
That was the only time I felt any serious doubt our enterprise. Nerves
purely! Alter that I worked a little more carefully, and took a trudge for
an hour every day. And at last, save for the heating in the furnace, our
labours were at an end.
Chapter 4
Inside the Sphere
The First Men In The Moon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: cushions and with the ample space of the first-class; but
alas! in his absurd attire, he durst not, for decency,
commingle with his equals; and this small annoyance, coming
last in such a series of disasters, cut him to the heart.
That night, when, in his Putney lodging, he reviewed the
expense, anxiety, and weariness of his adventure; when he
beheld the ruins of his last good trousers and his last
presentable coat; and above all, when his eye by any chance
alighted on the Tyrolese hat or the degrading ulster, his
heart would overflow with bitterness, and it was only by a
serious call on his philosophy that he maintained the dignity
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: Besides, I had ideas of many sensible and corporeal things; for although I
might suppose that I was dreaming, and that all which I saw or imagined
was false, I could not, nevertheless, deny that the ideas were in reality
in my thoughts. But, because I had already very clearly recognized in
myself that the intelligent nature is distinct from the corporeal, and as
I observed that all composition is an evidence of dependency, and that a
state of dependency is manifestly a state of imperfection, I therefore
determined that it could not be a perfection in God to be compounded of
these two natures and that consequently he was not so compounded; but that
if there were any bodies in the world, or even any intelligences, or other
natures that were not wholly perfect, their existence depended on his power
Reason Discourse |
