| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: the Negroes; but I have never been able to stop in order to show
what place these two races occupy in the midst of the democratic
people whom I was engaged in describing. I have mentioned in
what spirit, and according to what laws, the Anglo-American Union
was formed; but I could only glance at the dangers which menace
that confederation, whilst it was equally impossible for me to
give a detailed account of its chances of duration, independently
of its laws and manners. When speaking of the united republican
States, I hazarded no conjectures upon the permanence of
republican forms in the New World, and when making frequent
allusion to the commercial activity which reigns in the Union, I
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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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: is I am in gaol. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by
such ignoble instruments, as I did.
The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand
art. Charming people, such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys,
peasants and the like, know nothing about art, and are the very
salt of the earth. He is the Philistine who upholds and aids the
heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical forces of society, and who does
not recognise dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a
movement.
People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the
evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company.
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