| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: to cause friction and suffering in the interactions of the members of our
societies; more especially, as the individuals composing each type are not
sorted out into classes and families, but are found scattered through all
classes and grades in our societies. (One of the women holding the most
advanced and modern view of the relation of woman to life whom we have met
was the wife of a Northamptonshire shoemaker; herself engaged in making her
living by the sewing of the uppers of men's boots.) Persons bound by the
closest ties of blood or social contiguity and compelled to a continual
intercourse, are often those most widely dissevered in their amount of
adaptation to the new conditions of life; and the amount of social friction
and consequent human suffering arising from this fact is so subtle and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: for anything, they will--to be sure they will.
'Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up. Think not of life
and children first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice first, that
you may be justified before the princes of the world below. For neither
will you nor any that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this
life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now you depart in
innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws,
but of men. But if you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury for
injury, breaking the covenants and agreements which you have made with us,
and wronging those whom you ought least of all to wrong, that is to say,
yourself, your friends, your country, and us, we shall be angry with you
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