| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: most uncompromising are the works of males.
The New Man and Woman do not resemble two people, who, standing on a level
plain, set out on two roads, which diverging at different angles and
continued in straight lines, must continue to take them farther and farther
from each other the longer they proceed in them; rather, they resemble two
persons who start to climb a spur of the same mountain from opposite sides;
where, the higher they climb the nearer they come to each other, being
bound ultimately to meet at the top.
Even that opposition often made by males to the entrance of woman into the
new fields of labour, of which they at present hold the monopoly, is not
fundamentally sexual in its nature. The male who opposes the entrance of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: "What do you want with me?" she said.
The Marana could not repress a passing shudder.
"Perez," she asked, "has this room another issue?"
Perez made a negative gesture; confiding in that gesture, the mother
entered the room.
"Juana," she said, "I am your mother, your judge; you have placed
yourself in the only situation in which I could reveal myself to you.
You have come down to me, you, whom I thought in heaven. Ah! you have
fallen low indeed. You have a lover in this room."
"Madame, there is and can be no one but my husband," answered the
girl. "I am the Marquise de Montefiore."
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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 Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: justly be deemed the pest of society, and that such
proceedings must terminate in the destruction of
my health and fortune; but to admit thoughts of this
kind was to live upon the rack: I fled, therefore, to
the regions of mirth and jollity, as they are called,
and endeavoured with Burgundy, and a continual
rotation of company, to free myself from the pangs
of reflection. From these orgies we frequently sallied
forth in quest of adventures, to the no small terrour
and consternation of all the sober stragglers that
came in our way: and though we never injured, like
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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 Coxon Fund by Henry James: of the late Mayor's widow wouldn't be such as to admonish her to
ask him to dinner; perhaps indeed I went so far as to pray, they
would naturally form a bar to any contact. I tried to focus the
many-buttoned page, in the daily airing, as he perhaps even pushed
the Bath-chair over somebody's toes. I was destined to hear, none
the less, through Mrs. Saltram--who, I afterwards learned, was in
correspondence with Lady Coxon's housekeeper--that Gravener was
known to have spoken of the habitation I had in my eye as the
pleasantest thing at Clockborough. On his part, I was sure, this
was the voice not of envy but of experience. The vivid scene was
now peopled, and I could see him in the old-time garden with Miss
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