| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise, even although I am
not wise, when they want to reproach you. If you had waited a little
while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. For
I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I
am speaking now not to all of you, but only to those who have condemned me
to death. And I have another thing to say to them: you think that I was
convicted because I had no words of the sort which would have procured my
acquittal--I mean, if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone or unsaid.
Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words--
certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to
address you as you would have liked me to do, weeping and wailing 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 Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: sea. And Tom asked her about the sea; and she told him how it
rolled and roared over the rocks in winter nights, and lay still in
the bright summer days, for the children to bathe and play in it;
and many a story more, till Tom longed to go and see the sea, and
bathe in it likewise.
At last, at the bottom of a hill, they came to a spring; not such a
spring as you see here, which soaks up out of a white gravel in the
bog, among red fly-catchers, and pink bottle-heath, and sweet white
orchis; nor such a one as you may see, too, here, which bubbles up
under the warm sandbank in the hollow lane by the great tuft of
lady ferns, and makes the sand dance reels at the bottom, day and
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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 Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: of Laura, the romance of D'Artagnan, and the desperate inspiration of
Melnotte. Pity, then, that he had been denied expression, that he was
doomed to the burden of utter timidity and diffidence, that Fate had
set him tongue-tied and scarlet before the muslin-clad angels whom he
adored and vainly longed to rescue, clasp, comfort, and subdue.
The clock's hands were pointing close upon the hour of ten while
Tansey was playing billiards with a number of his friends. On
alternate evenings he was released from duty at the store after seven
o'clock. Even among his fellow-men Tansey was timorous and
constrained. In his imagination he had done valiant deeds and
performed acts of distinguished gallantry; but in fact he was a sallow
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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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: things in thy course like a courtesan eager for pleasure in her days
of splendor, thou hast steeped thyself in blood like some queen
stupefied by empery. Dost thou not remember to have been dull and
heavy at times, and the sudden marvelous lucidity of other moments; as
when Art emerges from an orgy? Oh! poet, painter, and singer, lover of
splendid ceremonies and protector of the arts, was thy friendship for
art perchance a caprice, that so thou shouldst sleep beneath
magnificent canopies? Was there not a day when, in thy fantastic
pride, though chastity and humility were prescribed to thee, thou
hadst brought all things beneath thy feet, and set thy foot on the
necks of princes; when earthly dominion, and wealth, and the mind of
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