| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: government would make itself felt almost at once.
The system we have advocated is a form of Guild
Socialism, leaning more, perhaps, towards Anarchism
than the official Guildsman would wholly approve. It
is in the matters that politicians usually ignore--
science and art, human relations, and the joy of life
--that Anarchism is strongest, and it is chiefly for the
sake of these things that we included such more or
less Anarchist proposals as the ``vagabond's wage.''
It is by its effects outside economics and politics, at
least as much as by effects inside them, that a social
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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 Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: rather than Society for Man. There is a perpetual struggle going on
between the Individual and the Social system which insists on using
him, while he is endeavoring to use it to his own profit; whereas, in
former days, man, really more free, was also more loyal to the public
weal. The round in which men struggle in these days has been
insensibly widened; the soul which can grasp it as a whole will ever
be a magnificent exception; for, as a general thing, in morals as in
physics, impulsion loses in intensity what it gains in extension.
Society can not be based on exceptions. Man in the first instance was
purely and simply, father; his heart beat warmly, concentrated in the
one ray of Family. Later, he lived for a clan, or a small community;
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: lesser organisms by experiment. Once determined, they are subject to
prophecy.
The problem of human heredity is now seen to be infinitely more
complex than imagined by Galton and his followers, and the optimistic
hope of elevating Eugenics to the level of a religion is a futile one.
Most of the Eugenists, including Professor Karl Pearson and his
colleagues of the Eugenics Laboratory of the University of London and
of the biometric laboratory in University College, have retained the
age-old point of view of ``Nature vs. Nurture'' and have attempted to
show the predominating influence of Heredity AS OPPOSED TO
Environment. This may be true; but demonstrated and repeated in
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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 Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: thought he was all right; and as he had with him
some of the ruined family's best brandy and wine,
such as he had not been accustomed to, and being
a thirsty soul, he drank till the reins fell from his
fingers, and in attempting to catch them he
tumbled out of the vehicle, and was unable to get
up. Frank and Mary there and then contrived
a plan by which to escape. As they were still
handcuffed by one wrist each, they alighted, took
from the drunken assassin's pocket the key, undid
the iron bracelets, and placed them upon Slator,
 Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |