| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: suspense fills you with pain you build stone walls and dig earth for
relief. Others have stood where you stand today, and have felt as you
feel; and another relief has been offered them, and they have taken it.
"When the day has come when they have seen the path in which they might
walk, they have not the strength to follow it. Habits have fastened on
them from which nothing but death can free them; which cling closer than
his sacerdotal sanctimony to a priest; which feed on the intellect like a
worm, sapping energy, hope, creative power, all that makes a man higher
than a beast--leaving only the power to yearn, to regret, and to sink lower
in the abyss.
"Boy," he said, and the listener was not more unsmiling now than the
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: clearly to exhibit what I can or cannot accomplish in the sciences.
Whether or not I have succeeded in this it is not for me to say; and I do
not wish to forestall the judgments of others by speaking myself of my
writings; but it will gratify me if they be examined, and, to afford the
greater inducement to this I request all who may have any objections to
make to them, to take the trouble of forwarding these to my publisher, who
will give me notice of them, that I may endeavor to subjoin at the same
time my reply; and in this way readers seeing both at once will more easily
determine where the truth lies; for I do not engage in any case to make
prolix replies, but only with perfect frankness to avow my errors if I am
convinced of them, or if I cannot perceive them, simply to state what I
 Reason Discourse |