| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: of science. Already methinks I discern a weakness in the grasp of
mathematical truth at the present time as compared with
the more robust intellect of our ancestors three hundred years ago.
I say nothing of the possible danger if a Woman should ever
surreptitiously learn to read and convey to her Sex the result
of her perusal of a single popular volume; nor of the possibility
that the indiscretion or disobedience of some infant Male
might reveal to a Mother the secrets of the logical dialect.
On the simple ground of the enfeebling of the Male intellect,
I rest this humble appeal to the highest Authorities to reconsider
the regulations of Female education.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Church, severed from which she is certain to wither away into that most
cruel and most godless of spectres, a religious world, had perished in
the East, from the evil influence of the universal practice of slave-
holding, as well as from the degradation of that Jewish nation which had
been for ages the great witness for these ideas; and all classes, like
their forefather Adam--like, indeed, the Old Adam--the selfish,
cowardly, brute nature in every man and in every age--were shifting the
blame of sin from their own consciences to human relationships and
duties, and therein, to the God who had appointed them; and saying, as
of old, 'The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the
tree, and I did eat.'"
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