| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: Therefore, my dear fellow, become the hero, the support, the creator
of the Left Centre in the new Chamber, and you'll succeed. Once
admitted into political ranks, once in the government, you can be what
you like,--of any opinion that triumphs."
Nathan was bent on creating a daily political journal and becoming the
absolute master of an enterprise which should absorb into it the
countless little papers then swarming from the press, and establish
ramifications with a review. He had seen so many fortunes made all
around him by the press that he would not listen to Blondet, who
warned him not to trust to such a venture, declaring that the plan was
unsound, so great was the present number of newspapers, all fighting
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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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James: matter of course. It was true that after she had said "You can
always come now, you know," the thing he was there for seemed
already to have happened. He asked her if it was the death of her
aunt that made the difference; to which she replied: "She never
knew I knew you. I wished her not to." The beautiful clearness of
her candour - her faded beauty was like a summer twilight -
disconnected the words from any image of deceit. They might have
struck him as the record of a deep dissimulation; but she had
always given him a sense of noble reasons. The vanished aunt was
present, as he looked about him, in the small complacencies of the
room, the beaded velvet and the fluted moreen; and though, as we
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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 The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Edinburgh. Salute the faithful in
my name. Salute Priscilla, salute Barnabas, salute Ebenezer - O
no, he's too much, I withdraw Ebenezer; enough of early Christians.
- Ever your faithful
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[EDINBURGH, JUNE 1875.]
SIMPLY a scratch. All right, jolly, well, and through with the
difficulty. My father pleased about the Burns. Never travel in
the same carriage with three able-bodied seamen and a fruiterer
from Kent; the A.-B.'s speak all night as though they were hailing
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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 Theaetetus by Plato: them; each has its kindred object,--each variety of colour has a
corresponding variety of sight, and so with sound and hearing, and with the
rest of the senses and the objects akin to them. Do you see, Theaetetus,
the bearings of this tale on the preceding argument?
THEAETETUS: Indeed I do not.
SOCRATES: Then attend, and I will try to finish the story. The purport is
that all these things are in motion, as I was saying, and that this motion
is of two kinds, a slower and a quicker; and the slower elements have their
motions in the same place and with reference to things near them, and so
they beget; but what is begotten is swifter, for it is carried to fro, and
moves from place to place. Apply this to sense:--When the eye and the
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