| 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: insists upon the necessity of satisfying material needs, upon
sanitation, hygiene, and education to effect the transformation of
society. The Socialist insists that healthy humanity is impossible
without a radical improvement of the social--and therefore of the
economic and industrial--environment. The Eugenist points out that
heredity is the great determining factor in the lives of men and
women. Eugenics is the attempt to solve the problem from the
biological and evolutionary point of view. You may ring all the
changes possible on ``Nurture'' or environment, the Eugenist may say
to the Socialist, but comparatively little can be effected until you
control biological and hereditary elements of the problem. Eugenics
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: room in his palace:
All Things are as Fate wills.
Now, by-and-by and after a while the king died; for when his time
comes, even the rich and the wise man must die, as well as the
poor and the simple man. So the king's son came, in turn, to be
king of that land; and, though he was not so bad as the world of
men goes, he was not the man that his father was, as this story
will show you.
One day, as he sat with his chief councillor, his eyes fell upon
the words written in letters of gold upon the wall--the words
that his father had written there in time gone by:
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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 The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated
at dinner alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
"Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_,
is published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its
authorship. Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the
Idiot of the Century. Do you think that fair criticism?"
"I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did
not occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who
wrote it."
Mr. W.C. Morrow, who used to live in San Jose, California, was
The Devil's Dictionary |
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 Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: letters from Jock and Grace--happy letters, all of them, some
with an undertone of great seriousness, as is fitting when two
people are readjusting their lives. Then, in spring, came the
news of the baby. The telegram came to Emma as she sat in her
office near the close of a busy day. As she read it and reread
it, the slip of paper became a misty yellow with vague lines of
blue dancing about on it; then it became a blur of nothing in
particular, as Emma's tears fell on it in a little shower of joy
and pride and wonder at the eternal miracle.
Then she dried her eyes, mopped the telegram and her lace jabot
impartially, went across the hall and opened the door marked "T.
Emma McChesney & Co. |
