| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: fall, with or without a crash?
I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time
in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge,
one of those large houses where there is a winding staircase quite at
the back lighted below from the street, higher up by borrowed lights,
and at the top by a skylight. There were forty furnished rooms--
furnished as students' rooms are! What does youth demand more than was
here supplied? A bed, a few chairs, a chest of drawers, a looking-
glass, and a table. As soon as the sky is blue the student opens his
window.
But in this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with. In front
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the
matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root of the war; but
its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, rendering it
incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about,
therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each
person."
France and England literally, observe, buy PANIC of each other; they
pay, each of them, for ten thousand-thousand-pounds'-worth of
terror, a year. Now suppose, instead of buying these ten millions'
worth of panic annually, they made up their minds to be at peace
with each other, and buy ten millions' worth of knowledge annually;
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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 Charmides by Plato: admit that?
Yes.
Now, I want to know, what is that which is not wisdom, and of which wisdom
is the science?
You are just falling into the old error, Socrates, he said. You come
asking in what wisdom or temperance differs from the other sciences, and
then you try to discover some respect in which they are alike; but they are
not, for all the other sciences are of something else, and not of
themselves; wisdom alone is a science of other sciences, and of itself.
And of this, as I believe, you are very well aware: and that you are only
doing what you denied that you were doing just now, trying to refute me,
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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 The Call of the Wild by Jack London: companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing
into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they
wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and
furry coats to protect them from the frost.
Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.
Judge Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road,
half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be
caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides.
The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about
through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of
tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious
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