| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the
Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi
cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for
which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be
satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness
like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great
trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow
cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for
freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: question to-day of a paper rich enough to allow its contributors
to air their personal opinions, and such opinions would be of
slight weight with readers who only ask to be kept informed or to
be amused, and who suspect every affirmation of being prompted by
motives of speculation. Even the critics have ceased to be able
to assure the success of a book or a play. They are capable of
doing harm, but not of doing a service. The papers are so
conscious of the uselessness of everything in the shape of
criticism or personal opinion, that they have reached the point
of suppressing literary criticism, confining themselves to citing
the title of a book, and appending a "puff" of two or three
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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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made
to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet
my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult.
Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself
the question, May not my condition after all be God's work,
and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty?
A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for a long time,
between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible make-
shifts of theology and superstition. The one held me an abject
slave--a prisoner for life, punished for some transgression in
which I had no lot nor part; and the other counseled me to manly
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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 Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: so that every hour that we are in this vile life where we are attacked
on all sides, chased and hunted down, we are moved to cry out and to
pray that God would not suffer us to become weary and faint and to
relapse into sin, shame, and unbelief. For otherwise it is impossible
to overcome even the least temptation.
This, then, is leading us not into temptation, to wit, when He gives us
power and strength to resist, the temptation, however, not being taken
away or removed. For while we live in the flesh and have the devil
about us, no one can escape temptation and allurements; and it cannot
be otherwise than that we must endure trials, yea, be engulfed in them;
but we pray for this, that we may not fall and be drowned in them.
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