| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: To turn the juice I take to deadly venom!
Religion is austere and beauty gentle;
Too strict a guardian for so fair a ward!
O, that she were, as is the air, to me!
Why, so she is, for when I would embrace her,
This do I, and catch nothing but my self.
I must enjoy her; for I cannot beat
With reason and reproof fond love a way.
[Enter Warwick.]
Here comes her father: I will work with him,
To bear my colours in this field of love.
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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 Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: for it. Even in our days, when a revolution breaks out in any
part of the world, the same formula is always invoked.
Its choice was happy in the extreme. It belongs to the category
of indefinite dream-evoking sentences, which every one is free to
interpret according to his own desires, hatreds, and hopes. In
matters of faith the real sense of words matters very little; it
is the meaning attached to them that makes their importance.
Of the three principles of the revolutionary device, equality was
most fruitful of consequences. We shall see in another part of
this book that it is almost the only one which still
survives, and is still productive of effects.
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