| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment
of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts
be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary
for the public good.
United States Declaration of Independence |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: assertion that opposites generated opposites. But that, replies Socrates,
was affirmed, not of opposite ideas either in us or in nature, but of
opposition in the concrete--not of life and death, but of individuals
living and dying. When this objection has been removed, Socrates proceeds:
This doctrine of the mutual exclusion of opposites is not only true of the
opposites themselves, but of things which are inseparable from them. For
example, cold and heat are opposed; and fire, which is inseparable from
heat, cannot co-exist with cold, or snow, which is inseparable from cold,
with heat. Again, the number three excludes the number four, because three
is an odd number and four is an even number, and the odd is opposed to the
even. Thus we are able to proceed a step beyond 'the safe and simple
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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 Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: murdering Alessandro's son. Cosmo, as jealous of his power as Charles
V. was of his, abdicated in favor of his son Francesco, after causing
the death of his other son, Garcia, to avenge the death of Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici, whom Garcia had assassinated. Cosmo the First and
his son Francesco, who ought to have been devoted, body and soul, to
the house of France, the only power on which they might really have
relied, made themselves the lacqueys of Charles V. and Philip II., and
were consequently the secret, base, and perfidious enemies of
Catherine de' Medici, one of the glories of their house.
Such were the leading contradictory and illogical traits, the
treachery, knavery, and black intrigues of a single house, that of the
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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 Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: to opinion which is devoid of intelligence. In such a case should we not
be right if we said that the state would be full of anarchy and
lawlessness?
ALCIBIADES: Decidedly.
SOCRATES: But ought we not then, think you, either to fancy that we know
or really to know, what we confidently propose to do or say?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if a person does that which he knows or supposes that he
knows, and the result is beneficial, he will act advantageously both for
himself and for the state?
ALCIBIADES: True.
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