| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: society, he will deprive him of parents, friends, money, knowledge, and of
every other good, that he may have him all to himself. Then again his ways
are not ways of pleasantness; he is mighty disagreeable; 'crabbed age and
youth cannot live together.' At every hour of the night and day he is
intruding upon him; there is the same old withered face and the remainder
to match--and he is always repeating, in season or out of season, the
praises or dispraises of his beloved, which are bad enough when he is
sober, and published all over the world when he is drunk. At length his
love ceases; he is converted into an enemy, and the spectacle may be seen
of the lover running away from the beloved, who pursues him with vain
reproaches, and demands his reward which the other refuses to pay. Too
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: The large violet burn'd; the campanula blue;
And Autumn's own flower, the saffron, peer'd through
The red-berried brambles and thick sassafras;
And fragrant with thyme was the delicate grass;
And high up, and higher, and highest of all,
The secular phantom of snow!
O'er the wall
Of a gray sunless glen gaping drowsy below,
That aerial spectre, reveal'd in the glow
Of the great golden dawn, hovers faint on the eye
And appears to grow in, and grow out of, the sky
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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 Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: moved restlessly.
"Oh, no, I couldn't bear it to be hers. When I think of her I feel as if I
were dying; all my fingers turn cold; I feel dead. Oh, you were only his
friend; you don't know!"
The older spoke softly and quickly, "Don't you feel a little gentle to her
when you think she's going to be his wife and the mother of his child? I
would like to put my arms round her and touch her once, if she would let
me. She is so beautiful, they say."
"Oh, I could never bear to see her; it would kill me. And they are so
happy together today! He is loving her so!"
"Don't you want him to be happy?" The older woman looked down at her.
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: as he gouged deeper into the matter, he was somewhat surprised, as
Chad likewise had perhaps been, at the uprising of this scruple.
He seemed even to divine that she had entertained it rather for
Chad than for herself, and that, as the young man had lacked the
chance to enlighten her, she had had to go on with it, he meanwhile
mistaking her motive.
He was rather glad, none the less, that they had in point of fact
not parted at the Cheval Blanc, that he hadn't been reduced to
giving them his blessing for an idyllic retreat down the river.
He had had in the actual case to make-believe more than he liked,
but this was nothing, it struck him, to what the other event
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