| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: lower conceptions of human relationship. It apprehends the State as
a mere "ring" kept about private disputations; it has not begun to
move towards the modern conception of the collective enterprise as
the determining criterion of human conduct. It sees its business as
a mere play upon the rules of a game between man and man, or between
men and men. They haggle, they dispute, they inflict and suffer
wrongs, they evade dues, and are liable or entitled to penalties and
compensations. The primary business of the law is held to be
decision in these wrangles, and as wrangling is subject to artistic
elaboration, the business of the barrister is the business of a
professional wrangler; he is a bravo in wig and gown who fights the
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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 Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: He looked at me with a burning eye, and seemed to repress the word
upon his lips; and I repented what I had said, for I saw that while
he spoke of the estate he had still a side-thought to his marriage.
And then, of a sudden, he twitched the letter from his pocket,
where it lay all crumpled, smoothed it violently on the table, and
read these words to me with a trembling tongue: "'My dear Jacob' -
This is how he begins!" cries he - "'My dear Jacob, I once called
you so, you may remember; and you have now done the business, and
flung my heels as high as Criffel.' What do you think of that,
Mackellar," says he, "from an only brother? I declare to God I
liked him very well; I was always staunch to him; and this is how
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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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: down from the heavens, and the murky clouds that passed overhead gave
a boding look to the land; all these things, together with the
immensity of the sea, said to me, "Die to-day or die to-morrow, still
must we not die?" And then--I wandered on, musing on the doubtful
future, on my blighted hopes. Gnawed by these gloomy thoughts, I
turned mechanically into the convent church, with the gray towers that
loomed like ghosts though the sea mists. I looked round with no
kindling of the imagination at the forest of columns, at the slender
arches set aloft upon the leafy capitals, a delicate labyrinth of
sculpture. I walked with careless eyes along the side aisles that
opened out before me like vast portals, ever turning upon their
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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 Poems by Oscar Wilde: And now lies dead by that empyreal dome
Which overtops Valdarno hung in air
By Brunelleschi - O Melpomene
Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!
Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies
That Joy's self may grow jealous, and the Nine
Forget awhile their discreet emperies,
Mourning for him who on Rome's lordliest shrine
Lit for men's lives the light of Marathon,
And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!
O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto's tower!
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