| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: delicate-looking little boys. Pip and Rags, shivering, crouching down,
slapping the water, never hesitated. But Isabel, who could swim twelve
strokes, and Kezia, who could nearly swim eight, only followed on the
strict understanding they were not to be splashed. As for Lottie, she
didn't follow at all. She liked to be left to go in her own way, please.
And that way was to sit down at the edge of the water, her legs straight,
her knees pressed together, and to make vague motions with her arms as if
she expected to be wafted out to sea. But when a bigger wave than usual,
an old whiskery one, came lolloping along in her direction, she scrambled
to her feet with a face of horror and flew up the beach again.
"Here, mother, keep those for me, will you?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: those lands you have desired, and you should obtain black men to labour on
them and make to yourself great wealth; or should you create that company"-
-Peter started--"and fools should buy from you, so that you became the
richest man in the land; and if you should take to yourself wide lands, and
raise to yourself great palaces, so that princes and great men of earth
crept up to you and laid their hands against yours, so that you might slip
gold into them--what would it profit you?"
"Profit!" Peter Halket stared: "Why, it would profit everything. What
makes Beit and Rhodes and Barnato so great? If you've got eight
millions--"
"Peter Simon Halket, which of those souls you have seen on earth is to you
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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 Philebus by Plato: SOCRATES: If, then, we were to begin by mingling the sections of each
class which have the most of truth, will not the union suffice to give us
the loveliest of lives, or shall we still want some elements of another
kind?
PROTARCHUS: I think that we ought to do what you suggest.
SOCRATES: Let us suppose a man who understands justice, and has reason as
well as understanding about the true nature of this and of all other
things.
PROTARCHUS: We will suppose such a man.
SOCRATES: Will he have enough of knowledge if he is acquainted only with
the divine circle and sphere, and knows nothing of our human spheres and
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: succumbed.
At last there came a moment when a number, pursued by the Russians,
found only snow on which to bivouac, and these lay down to rise no
more. Insensibly this mass of almost annihilated beings became so
compact, so deaf, so torpid, so happy perhaps, that Marechal Victor,
who had been their heroic defender by holding twenty thousand Russians
under Wittgenstein at bay, was forced to open a passage by main force
through this forest of men in order to cross the Beresina with five
thousand gallant fellows whom he was taking to the emperor. The
unfortunate malingerers allowed themselves to be crushed rather than
stir; they perished in silence, smiling at their extinguished fires,
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