| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: safety on her brain, from the better hiding place to the worse.
The secretary was more conspicuous, more accessible
in a room in which she could no longer mount guard.
It opened with a key, but there was a little brass handle,
like a button, as well; I saw this as I played my lamp over it.
I did something more than this at that moment:
I caught a glimpse of the possibility that Miss Tita wished me
really to understand. If she did not wish me to understand,
if she wished me to keep away, why had she not locked the door
of communication between the sitting room and the sala? That
would have been a definite sign that I was to leave them alone.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: the realistic, constructive, Utopian imagination, which lack is a
ghastly defect. Freedom from imaginative illusion is therefore no
guarantee whatever of nobility of character: that is why inculcated
submissiveness makes us slaves to people much worse than ourselves,
and why it is so important that submissiveness should no longer be
inculcated.
And yet as long as you have the compulsory school as we know it, we
shall have submissiveness inculcated. What is more, until the active
hours of child life are organized separately from the active hours of
adult life, so that adults can enjoy the society of children in reason
without being tormented, disturbed, harried, burdened, and hindered in
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