| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: others in aggregate wealth and population, it may be sound policy to
shut our eyes to the sacrifice of human life,--unregarded life and
suffering--and to stimulate rapid procreation. But even so, such a
policy is bound in the long run to defeat itself, as the decline and
fall of great civilizations of the past emphatically indicate. Even
the bitterest opponent of our ideals would refuse to subscribe to a
philosophy of mere quantity, of wealth and population lacking in
spiritual direction or significance. All of us hope for and look
forward to the fine flowering of human genius--of genius not expending
and dissipating its energy in the bitter struggle for mere existence,
but developing to a fine maturity, sustained and nourished by the soil
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
STRANGER: Do you think, I mean, that we have really fulfilled our
intention?--There has been a sort of discussion, and yet the investigation
seems to me not to be perfectly worked out: this is where the enquiry
fails.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand.
STRANGER: I will try to make the thought, which is at this moment present
in my mind, clearer to us both.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.
STRANGER: There were many arts of shepherding, and one of them was the
political, which had the charge of one particular herd?
Statesman |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: errata in memoirs, rectify dates, correct facts, bet a hundred to one,
and are certain about everything. You can easily detect them in some
gross blunder in the course of a single evening. They will tell you
they were in Paris at the time of Mallet's conspiracy, forgetting that
half an hour earlier they had described how they had crossed the
Beresina. Nearly all Contradictors are "chevaliers" of the Legion of
honor; they talk loudly, have retreating foreheads, and play high.
"Madame Firmiani a hundred thousand francs a year? nonsense, you are
crazy! Some people will persist in giving millions with the liberality
of authors, to whom it doesn't cost a penny to dower their heroines.
Madame Firmiani is simply a coquette, who has lately ruined a young
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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 Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: 'Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean
To stifle beauty and to steal his breath,
Who when he liv'd, his breath and beauty set
Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet? 936
'If he be dead, O no! it cannot be,
Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it;
O yes! it may; thou hast no eyes to see,
But hatefully at random dost thou hit. 940
Thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart
Mistakes that aim and cleaves an infant's heart.
'Hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke,
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