| 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: ideas of sex to its expression as a purely procreative function.
Compulsory legislation which would make the inevitably futile attempt
to prohibit one of the most beneficent and necessary of human
expressions, or regulate it into the channels of preconceived
philosophies, would reduce us to the unpleasant days predicted by
William Blake, when
``Priests in black gowns will be walking their rounds And binding
with briars our joys and desires.''
Eugenics is chiefly valuable in its negative aspects. It is
``negative Eugenics'' that has studied the histories of such families
as the Jukeses and the Kallikaks, that has pointed out the network of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: "Women alone know how to render such impressions," I said. "You would
be the despair of a poet, dear soul that I divine so well!"
"The extreme heat of mid-day casts into those three expressions of the
infinite an all-powerful color," said Pauline, smiling. "I can here
conceive the poesy and the passion of the East."
"And I can perceive its despair."
"Yes," she said, "this dune is a cloister,--a sublime cloister."
We now heard the hurried steps of our guide; he had put on his Sunday
clothes. We addressed a few ordinary words to him; he seemed to think
that our mood had changed, and with that reserve that comes of misery,
he kept silence. Though from time to time we pressed each other's
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