| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: chickens in a coop. In short, he resolved to centre his ideas, his
sentiments, his affections upon a woman, ONE WOMAN?--LA PHAMME!
Ah! . . . .
"At first he conceived the preposterous notion of an unhappy passion,
and gyrated for a while about his fair cousin, Mme. d'Aiglemont, not
perceiving that she had already danced the waltz in Faust with a
diplomatist. The year '25 went by, spent in tentatives, in futile
flirtations, and an unsuccessful quest. The loving object of which he
was in search did not appear. Passion is extremely rare; and in our
time as many barriers have been raised against passion in social life
as barricades in the streets. In truth, my brothers, the 'improper' is
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: else, and went to the place and led others thither, would he not be a right
and good guide?
MENO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And a person who had a right opinion about the way, but had
never been and did not know, might be a good guide also, might he not?
MENO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And while he has true opinion about that which the other knows,
he will be just as good a guide if he thinks the truth, as he who knows the
truth?
MENO: Exactly.
SOCRATES: Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as
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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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: in the history of the world. What was left of all this bygone dust
and heroism? I was told that Protestantism still survived in this
head seat of Protestant resistance; so much the priest himself had
told me in the monastery parlour. But I had yet to learn if it
were a bare survival, or a lively and generous tradition. Again,
if in the northern Cevennes the people are narrow in religious
judgments, and more filled with zeal than charity, what was I to
look for in this land of persecution and reprisal - in a land where
the tyranny of the Church produced the Camisard rebellion, and the
terror of the Camisards threw the Catholic peasantry into legalised
revolt upon the other side, so that Camisard and Florentin skulked
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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 Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
#STARTMARK#
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
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