| 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: to bring as many influences as can be reasonably employed, to cause
the useful classes of the community to contribute MORE than their
proportion to the next generation. Eugenics thus concerns itself with
all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with
those that develop them to the utmost advantage. It is, in short, the
attempt to bring reason and intelligence to bear upon HEREDITY. But
Galton, in spite of the immense value of this approach and his great
stimulation to criticism, was completely unable to formulate a
definite and practical working program. He hoped at length to
introduce Eugenics ``into the national conscience like a new
religion....I see no impossibility in Eugenics becoming a religious
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: from the subject to the object, from earth (diesseits) to heaven (jenseits)
without regard to the gulf which later theology and philosophy have made
between them. They are also intended to supplement or explain each other.
They relate to a subject of which Plato himself would have said that 'he
was not confident of the precise form of his own statements, but was strong
in the belief that something of the kind was true.' It is the spirit, not
the letter, in which they agree--the spirit which places the divine above
the human, the spiritual above the material, the one above the many, the
mind before the body.
The stream of ancient philosophy in the Alexandrian and Roman times widens
into a lake or sea, and then disappears underground to reappear after many
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