| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: quietude, such as that I had up to this moment enjoyed, to the
agitation and tumult which were now kindled in my breast and
tingled through my veins, thrilled me with a kind of horror, and
impressed me with a vague sense that I was about to undergo some
great transformation, and to enter upon a new existence.
"We sat down close by each other. I took her hand within mine,
`Ah! Manon,' said I, with a look of sorrow, `I little thought
that love like mine could have been repaid with treachery! It
was a poor triumph to betray a heart of which you were the
absolute mistress--whose sole happiness it was to gratify and
obey you. Tell me if among others you have found any so
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: are invariably conceived as greater than man, for good or evil.
In the modern humanitarian order as adopted by Wagner, Man is the
highest. In The Rhine Gold, it is pretended that there are as yet
no men on the earth. There are dwarfs, giants, and gods. The
danger is that you will jump to the conclusion that the gods, at
least, are a higher order than the human order. On the contrary,
the world is waiting for Man to redeem it from the lame and
cramped government of the gods. Once grasp that; and the allegory
becomes simple enough. Really, of course, the dwarfs, giants, and
gods are dramatizations of the three main orders of men: to wit,
the instinctive, predatory, lustful, greedy people; the patient,
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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 Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: I am.
SOCRATES: Now let us put the case generally: whenever there is a question
and answer, who is the speaker,--the questioner or the answerer?
ALCIBIADES: I should say, Socrates, that the answerer was the speaker.
SOCRATES: And have I not been the questioner all through?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you the answerer?
ALCIBIADES: Just so.
SOCRATES: Which of us, then, was the speaker?
ALCIBIADES: The inference is, Socrates, that I was the speaker.
SOCRATES: Did not some one say that Alcibiades, the fair son of Cleinias,
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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 Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: could not bear that they had deserted her for me. I liked her great dreamy
blue eyes, I liked her slow walk and drawl; when I saw her sitting among
men, she seemed to me much too good to be among them; I would have given
all their compliments if she would once have smiled at me as she smiled at
them, with all her face breaking into radiance, with her dimples and
flashing teeth. But I knew it never could be; I felt sure she hated me;
that she wished I was dead; that she wished I had never come to the
village. She did not know, when we went out riding, and a man who had
always ridden beside her came to ride beside me, that I sent him away; that
once when a man thought to win my favour by ridiculing her slow drawl
before me I turned on him so fiercely that he never dared come before me
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