| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: style, I must in particular thank you; though even here, I am vexed
you should not have remarked on my attempted change of manner:
seemingly this attempt is still quite unsuccessful! Well, we shall
fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.
And now for my last word: Mrs. Stevenson is very anxious that you
should see me, and that she should see you, in the flesh. If you
at all share in these views, I am a fixture. Write or telegraph
(giving us time, however, to telegraph in reply, lest the day be
impossible), and come down here to a bed and a dinner. What do you
say, my dear critic? I shall be truly pleased to see you; and to
explain at greater length what I meant by saying narrative was 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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: where there are so many marriages and decisive battles, and
where we all, at certain hours of the day, and with great
gusto and despatch, stow a portion of victuals finally and
irretrievably into the bag which contains us. And it would
seem also, on a hasty view, that the attainment of as much as
possible was the one goal of man's contentious life. And yet,
as regards the spirit, this is but a semblance. We live in an
ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to
another in an endless series. There is always a new horizon
for onward-looking men, and although we dwell on a small
planet, immersed in petty business and not enduring beyond a
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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 Gorgias by Plato: CALLICLES: Yes, by the Gods, you are literally always talking of cobblers
and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if this had to do with our argument.
SOCRATES: But why will you not tell me in what a man must be superior and
wiser in order to claim a larger share; will you neither accept a
suggestion, nor offer one?
CALLICLES: I have already told you. In the first place, I mean by
superiors not cobblers or cooks, but wise politicians who understand the
administration of a state, and who are not only wise, but also valiant and
able to carry out their designs, and not the men to faint from want of
soul.
SOCRATES: See now, most excellent Callicles, how different my charge
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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 Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good, we ought
to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural
psychology; if not, we ought to make short work with it, no
matter what supernatural being may have infused it.
Well, how is it with these fruits? If we except the class of
preeminent saints of whom the names illumine history, and
consider only the usual run of "saints," the shopkeeping
church-members and ordinary youthful or middle-aged recipients of
instantaneous conversion, whether at revivals or in the
spontaneous course of methodistic growth, you will probably agree
that no splendor worthy of a wholly supernatural creature
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