| 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: endeavour the most penetrating thinkers are now turning to the
consideration of our problem as a fundamental necessity to American
civilization. They are coming to see that a QUALITATIVE factor as
opposed to a QUANTITATIVE one is of primary importance in dealing with
the great masses of humanity.
Certain fundamental convictions should be made clear here. The
programme for Birth. Control is not a charity. It is not aiming to
interfere in the private lives of poor people, to tell them how many
children they should have, nor to sit in judgment upon their fitness
to become parents. It aims, rather, to awaken responsibility, to
answer the demand for a scientific means by which and through which
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the steps that led to the throne of Manator. Behind the throne he
parted the arras and found the secret opening. Into this he bore
the girl and down a long, narrow corridor and winding runways
that led to lower levels until they came to the pits of the
palace of O-Tar. Here was a labyrinth of passages and chambers
presenting a thousand hiding-places.
As Turan bore Tara up the steps toward the throne a score of
warriors rose as though to rush forward to intercept them.
"Stay!" cried Ghek, "or your jeddak dies," and they halted in
their tracks, waiting the will of this strange, uncanny creature.
Presently Ghek took his eyes from the eyes of O-Tar and the
The Chessmen of Mars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: and they inspired our friend, for the first time in his life,
with a vague self-mistrust.
An observer with anything of an eye for national types would
have had no difficulty in determining the local origin
of this undeveloped connoisseur, and indeed such an observer
might have felt a certain humorous relish of the almost ideal
completeness with which he filled out the national mould.
The gentleman on the divan was a powerful specimen of an American.
But he was not only a fine American; he was in the first place,
physically, a fine man. He appeared to possess that kind of health
and strength which, when found in perfection, are the most impressive--
|
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 In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: of a man - man himself, the rat and the land crab, its chief
inhabitants; not more variously supplied with plants; and offering
to the eye, even when perfect, only a ring of glittering beach and
verdant foliage, enclosing and enclosed by the blue sea.
In no quarter are the atolls so thickly congregated, in none are
they so varied in size from the greatest to the least, and in none
is navigation so beset with perils, as in that archipelago that we
were now to thread. The huge system of the trades is, for some
reason, quite confounded by this multiplicity of reefs, the wind
intermits, squalls are frequent from the west and south-west,
hurricanes are known. The currents are, besides, inextricably
|
