| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: - a gift nowhere more powerful than in France, since nowhere else
are men's emotions so quick to respond to the appeal of eloquence
- had given him this mastery. At his bidding now the gale would
sweep away the windmill against which he had flung himself in vain.
But that, as he straightforwardly revealed it, was no part of his
intent.
"Ah, wait!" he bade them. "Is this miserable instrument of a
corrupt system worth the attention of your noble indignation?"
He hoped his words would be reported to M. de Lesdiguieres. He
thought it would be good for the soul of M. de Lesdiguieres to hear
the undiluted truth about himself for once.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: the other and filling the empty house, which for long months had
been uninhabited, with exclamations and bursts of laughter. In the
first place, there was the hall. It was a little damp, but that
didn't matter; one wasn't going to sleep in it. Then came the
drawing room, quite the thing, the drawing room, with its windows
opening on the lawn. Only the red upholsteries there were hideous;
she would alter all that. As to the dining room-well, it was a
lovely dining room, eh? What big blowouts you might give in Paris
if you had a dining room as large as that! As she was going
upstairs to the first floor it occurred to her that she had not seen
the kitchen, and she went down again and indulged in ecstatic
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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 Theaetetus by Plato: with one another implies a principle which is above sensation, and which
resides in the mind itself. We are thus led to look for knowledge in a
higher sphere, and accordingly Theaetetus, when again interrogated, replies
(2) that 'knowledge is true opinion.' But how is false opinion possible?
The Megarian or Eristic spirit within us revives the question, which has
been already asked and indirectly answered in the Meno: 'How can a man be
ignorant of that which he knows?' No answer is given to this not
unanswerable question. The comparison of the mind to a block of wax, or to
a decoy of birds, is found wanting.
But are we not inverting the natural order in looking for opinion before we
have found knowledge? And knowledge is not true opinion; for the Athenian
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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 Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: mother likewise departed, retiring into France; from which
country she never returned.
All through the latter part of May, and the whole of the
following month, this flight from the dread enemy of mankind
continued; presenting a melancholy spectacle to those who
remained, until at last the capital seemed veritably a city of
the dead. But for the credit of humanity be it stated, that not
all possessed of health and wealth abandoned the town. Prominent
amongst those who remained were the Duke of Albemarle, Lord
Craven, the lord mayor, Sir John Laurence, some of his aldermen,
and a goodly number of physicians, chirurgeons, and apothecaries,
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