| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: frightened her. Their walk in the Park had not been a success.
Trenor had married young, and since his marriage his intercourse
with women had not taken the form of the sentimental small-talk
which doubles upon itself like the paths in a maze. He was first
puzzled and then irritated to find himself always led back to the
same starting-point, and Lily felt that she was gradually losing
control of the situation. Trenor was in truth in an unmanageable
mood. In spite of his understanding with Rosedale he had been
somewhat heavily "touched" by the fall in stocks; his household
expenses weighed on him, and he seemed to be meeting, on all
sides, a sullen opposition to his wishes, instead of the easy
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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 Philebus by Plato: to the opposite. For allowing that the happiness of others is reflected on
ourselves, and also that every man must live before he can do good to
others, still the last limitation is a very trifling exception, and the
happiness of another is very far from compensating for the loss of our own.
According to Mr. Mill, he would best carry out the principle of utility who
sacrificed his own pleasure most to that of his fellow-men. But if so,
Hobbes and Butler, Shaftesbury and Hume, are not so far apart as they and
their followers imagine. The thought of self and the thought of others are
alike superseded in the more general notion of the happiness of mankind at
large. But in this composite good, until society becomes perfected, the
friend of man himself has generally the least share, and may be a great
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