| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: to feign astonishment at seeing her. "But what on earth
are you doing in this wilderness?" He had really no
idea what he was saying: he felt as if he were shouting
at her across endless distances, and she might vanish
again before he could overtake her.
"I? Oh, I'm here on business too," she answered,
turning her head toward him so that they were face to
face. The words hardly reached him: he was aware
only of her voice, and of the startling fact that not an
echo of it had remained in his memory. He had not
even remembered that it was low-pitched, with a faint
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: period of service was over, and bury it end-wise at the head of her
trunk. As she now took it in hand the book fell open where the leaf
was torn, and she stood and gazed upon that evidence of her bygone
discomposure. There returned again the vision of the two brown eyes
staring at her, intent and bright, out of that dark corner of the kirk.
The whole appearance and attitude, the smile, the suggested gesture of
young Hermiston came before her in a flash at the sight of the torn
page. "I was surely fey!" she said, echoing the words of Dandie, and
at the suggested doom her high spirits deserted her. She flung herself
prone upon the bed, and lay there, holding the psalm-book in her hands
for hours, for the more part in a mere stupor of unconsenting pleasure
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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 Meno by Plato: shows the tentative character of early endeavours to think. They have not
yet settled down into a single system. Plato uses them, though he also
criticises them; he acknowledges that both he and others are always talking
about them, especially about the Idea of Good; and that they are not
peculiar to himself (Phaedo; Republic; Soph.). But in his later writings
he seems to have laid aside the old forms of them. As he proceeds he makes
for himself new modes of expression more akin to the Aristotelian logic.
Yet amid all these varieties and incongruities, there is a common meaning
or spirit which pervades his writings, both those in which he treats of the
ideas and those in which he is silent about them. This is the spirit of
idealism, which in the history of philosophy has had many names and taken
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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 Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: shall marry him to me."
This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of her matrimonial
views, and the Chaplain's wife shrieked with horror. However, the
man on the sofa needed attention first. He was a young Englishman,
and his head had been cut to the bone by something jagged. Lispeth
said she had found him down the khud, so she had brought him in.
He was breathing queerly and was unconscious.
He was put to bed and tended by the Chaplain, who knew something of
medicine; and Lispeth waited outside the door in case she could be
useful. She explained to the Chaplain that this was the man she
meant to marry; and the Chaplain and his wife lectured her severely
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