| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: landowner might have done: he spoke of the necessary gradations
which fortune establishes among men, of obedience to established
laws, of the influence of good morals in commonwealths, and of
the support which religious opinions give to order and to
freedom; he even went to far as to quote an evangelical authority
in corroboration of one of his political tenets.
I listened, and marvelled at the feebleness of human reason.
A proposition is true or false, but no art can prove it to be one
or the other, in the midst of the uncertainties of science and
the conflicting lessons of experience, until a new incident
disperses the clouds of doubt; I was poor, I become rich, and I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: Yet they did not feel the wetness so much as might be
supposed. They were both young, and they were talking
of the time when they lived and loved together at
Talbothays Dairy, that happy green tract of land where
summer had been liberal in her gifts; in substance to
all, emotionally to these. Tess would fain not have
conversed with Marian of the man who was legally, if
not actually, her husband; but the irresistible
fascination of the subject betrayed her into
reciprocating Marian's remarks. And thus, as has been
said, though the damp curtains of their bonnets flapped
 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |