| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: emulating and admiring Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian above all
politicians, adhered to the aristocratical principles of government;
and had Themistocles, son to Neocles, his adversary on the side of the
populace. Some say that, being boys and bred up together from their
infancy, they were always at variance with each other in all their
words and actions as well serious as playful, and that in this their
early contention they soon made proof of their natural inclinations;
the one being ready, adventurous, and subtle, engaging readily and
eagerly in everything; the other of a staid and settled temper,
intent on the exercise of justice, not admitting any degree of
falsity, indecorum, or trickery, no, not so much as at his play.
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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 The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: some Socialist pamphlet for any general ideas whatever about the
huge swirling world process in which we found ourselves. I always
look back with particular exasperation to the cessation of our
modern history at the year 1815. There it pulled up abruptly, as
though it had come upon something indelicate. . . .
But, after all, what would Topham or Flack have made of the huge
adjustments of the nineteenth century? Flack was the chief
cricketer on the staff; he belonged to that great cult which
pretends that the place of this or that county in the struggle for
the championship is a matter of supreme importance to boys. He
obliged us to affect a passionate interest in the progress of county
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