| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: understand that there will be a vast increase in human intelligence and
sympathy; and that this increases of intelligence will be effected at the
cost of human fertility. But this decline in reproductive power will not,
we are told, be sufficient to assure the very highest of social conditions:
it will only relieve that pressure of population which has been the main
cause of human suffering. The state of perfect social equilibrium will be
approached, but never quite reached, by mankind --
Unless there be discovered some means of solving economic problems, just
as social insects have solved them, by the suppression of sex-life.
Supposing that such a discovery were made, and that the human race should
decide to arrest the development of six in the majority of its young,-- so
Kwaidan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: nature" for them, and begin to support measures for their reform.
Can anything be more absurd than the copy of The Echo which
contains a notice of the performance of my play? It is edited by
a gentleman who, having devoted his life to work of the
Shaftesbury type, exposes social evils and clamors for their
reform in every column except one; and that one is occupied by
the declaration of the paper's kindly theatre critic, that the
performance left him "wondering what useful purpose the play was
intended to serve." The balance has to be redressed by the more
fashionable papers, which usually combine capable art criticism
with West-End solecism on politics and sociology. It is very
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