| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: THEODORUS: How so?
SOCRATES: Why, suppose that you determine in your own mind something to be
true, and declare your opinion to me; let us assume, as he argues, that
this is true to you. Now, if so, you must either say that the rest of us
are not the judges of this opinion or judgment of yours, or that we judge
you always to have a true opinion? But are there not thousands upon
thousands who, whenever you form a judgment, take up arms against you and
are of an opposite judgment and opinion, deeming that you judge falsely?
THEODORUS: Yes, indeed, Socrates, thousands and tens of thousands, as
Homer says, who give me a world of trouble.
SOCRATES: Well, but are we to assert that what you think is true to you
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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 Straight Deal by Owen Wister: to say, but crowded and wailed of their own discomforts, meals, rooms,
every paltry personal inconvenience to which they were subjected, or
feared that they were going to be subjected. Under the unprecedented
stress this was, perhaps, not unnatural; but it would have seemed less
displeasing had they also occasionally showed concern for England's
plight and peril.
An American, this time a man (our crudities are not limited to the sex)
stood up in a theatre, disputing the sixpence which you always have to
pay for your program in the London theatres. He disputed so long that
many people had to stand waiting to be shown their seats.
During deals at a game of bridge on a Cunard steamer, the talk had turned
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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 The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: hame?" and it seems at once as if no beauty under the kind
heavens, and no society of the wise and good, can repay me
for my absence from my country. And though I think I would
rather die elsewhere, yet in my heart of hearts I long to be
buried among good Scots clods. I will say it fairly, it
grows on me with every year: there are no stars so lovely as
Edinburgh street-lamps. When I forget thee, auld Reekie, may
my right hand forget its cunning!
The happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotchman. You
must pay for it in many ways, as for all other advantages on
earth. You have to learn the paraphrases and the shorter
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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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: President stood in the way; and it can be easily seen how reluctant
good men might be to admit an apostasy which involved so much
of baseness and ingratitude. It was natural that they should seek
to save him by bending to him even when he leaned to the side
of error. But all is changed now. Congress knows now that it must
go on without his aid, and even against his machinations.
The advantage of the present session over the last is immense.
Where that investigated, this has the facts. Where that walked by faith,
this may walk by sight. Where that halted, this must go forward,
and where that failed, this must succeed, giving the country whole
measures where that gave us half-measures, merely as a means of
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