| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: private property, marriage in its present form must disappear.
This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and
makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a
form of freedom that will help the full development of personality,
and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful,
and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He rejected the claims of
family life, although they existed in his day and community in a
very marked form. 'Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?' he
said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him. When one
of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, 'Let the
dead bury the dead,' was his terrible answer. He would allow no
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: kitchen. On the other side was the salon, with four windows, beyond
which were two smaller rooms,--one looking on the garden, and used as
a boudoir, the other lighted from the courtyard, and used as a sort of
office.
The upper floor contained a complete apartment for a family household,
and a suite of rooms where the venerable Abbe de Sponde had his abode.
The garrets offered fine quarters to the rats and mice, whose
nocturnal performances were related by Mademoiselle Cormon to the
Chevalier de Valois, with many expressions of surprise at the
inutility of her efforts to get rid of them. The garden, about half an
acre in size, is margined by the Brillante, so named from the
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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 The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Who willingly will venture in thy cause.
KING JOHN.
Welcome, Bohemian king, and welcome all:
This your great kindness I will not forget.
Besides your plentiful rewards in Crowns,
That from our Treasury ye shall receive,
There comes a hare brained Nation, decked in pride,
The spoil of whom will be a treble gain.
And now my hope is full, my joy complete:
At Sea, we are as puissant as the force
Of Agamemnon in the Haven of Troy;
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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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: sharp the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and
bungling. 'Great inventors in all ages knew this - Michael Angelo
and Albert Durer are known by this and by this alone'; and another
time he wrote, with all the simple directness of nineteenth-century
prose, 'to generalise is to be an idiot.'
And this love of definite conception, this clearness of vision,
this artistic sense of limit, is the characteristic of all great
work and poetry; of the vision of Homer as of the vision of Dante,
of Keats and William Morris as of Chaucer and Theocritus. It lies
at the base of all noble, realistic and romantic work as opposed to
the colourless and empty abstractions of our own eighteenth-century
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