| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: this occasion he was anxious not to compromise his dignity as a
father. He daintily took a pinch of snuff, cleared his throat two or
three times, as if he were about to demand a count out of the House;
then he heard his daughter's light step, and she came in humming an
air from Il Barbiere.
"Good-morning, papa. What do you want with me so early?" Having sung
these words, as though they were the refrain of the melody, she kissed
the Count, not with the familiar tenderness which makes a daughter's
love so sweet a thing, but with the light carelessness of a mistress
confident of pleasing, whatever she may do.
"My dear child," said Monsieur de Fontaine, gravely, "I sent for you
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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 Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: and the feeble-minded, thus protected, so we are assured, may even
marry some brighter member of the community, and thus lessen the
chances of procreating another generation of imbeciles. We read
further that some of our doctors believe that ``in our social scale,
there is a place for the good feeble-minded.''
In such a reckless and thoughtless differentiation between the ``bad''
and the ``good'' feeble-minded, we find new evidence of the
conventional middle-class bias that also finds expression among some
of the eugenists. We do not object to feeble-mindedness simply
because it leads to immorality and criminality; nor can we approve of
it when it expresses itself in docility, submissiveness and obedience.
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