The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: vested interests of thousands, will put them to inconvenience,
possibly at first to great expense; and yet facts which you can
neither see nor handle, but must accept and pay hundreds of
thousands of pounds for, on the mere word of a doctor or inspector
who gets his living thereby. Poor John Bull! To expect that you
would accept such a gospel cheerfully was indeed to expect too
much!
But yet, though the public opinion of the mass could not be
depended on, there was a body left, distinct from the mass, and
priding itself so much on that distinctness that it was ready to
say at times--of course in more courteous--at least in what it
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--"
And--"Are we then so serious?"
La Figlia Che Piange
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair--
Lean on a garden urn--
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair--
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise--
 Prufrock/Other Observations |