| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Jesse sat up.
"What quotation?"
"You know: 'He who is not with me is against me.'"
"Wellwhat about it?"
Jesse was puzzled but not alarmed.
"Well, you say herelet me see." Burne opened the paper and read:
"'He who is not with me is against me, as that gentleman said who
was notoriously capable of only coarse distinctions and puerile
generalities.'"
"What of it?" Ferrenby began to look alarmed. "Oliver Cromwell
said it, didn't he? or was it Washington, or one of the saints?
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: confuted, even in a single instance; for my being wrong would give
me, what I can have no objection to possess, a higher opinion than I
have now, of the unassisted capabilities of my fellow-men.
But civilisation must have begun somewhen, somewhere, with some
person, or some family, or some nation; and how did it begin?
I have said already that I do not know. But I have had my dream--
like the philosopher--and as I have not been ashamed to tell it
elsewhere, I shall not be ashamed to tell it here. And it is this:
What if the beginnings of true civilisation in this unique,
abnormal, diseased, unsatisfied, incomprehensible, and truly
miraculous and supernatural race we call man, had been literally,
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