| 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: they condemn. The birth-rate among conservative opponents indicates
that they restrict the numbers of their own children by the methods of
Birth Control, or are of such feeble procreative energy as to be
thereby unfitted to dictate moral laws for other people. They prefer
that we should think their small number of children is accidental,
rather than publicly admit the successful practice of intelligent
foresight. Or else they hold themselves up as paragons of virtue and
self-control, and would have us believe that they have brought their
children into the world solely from a high, stern sense of public
duty--an attitude which is about as convincing as it would be to
declare that they found them under gooseberry bushes. How else can we
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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 Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: treated by a few mean illiterate traders between us and the
stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lyes, folly, and
impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the
planets, tho' they descend from no greater a height than their
own brains.
I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence
of this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification
at present, than that it hath been in all ages defended by many
learned men, and among the rest by Socrates himself, whom I look
upon as undoubtedly the wisest of uninspir'd mortals: To which if
we add, that those who have condemned this art, though otherwise
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