| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: it seems incredible that life can go on with so few properties, or
the great child, man, find entertainment in so bare a playroom.
And truly it is as yet an incomplete society in some points; or at
least it contained, as I passed through, one person incompletely
civilised. At North Platte, where we supped that evening, one man
asked another to pass the milk-jug. This other was well-dressed
and of what we should call a respectable appearance; a darkish man,
high spoken, eating as though he had some usage of society; but he
turned upon the first speaker with extraordinary vehemence of tone
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"There's a waiter here!" he cried.
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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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon: public has successively consented to put up with the reduction of
four-fifths in the payment of their coupons by these different
countries. Bankruptcy under these ingenious conditions allows
the equilibrium of Budgets difficult to balance to be instantly
restored. Moreover, wars, socialism, and economic conflicts hold
in store for us a profusion of other catastrophes in the period
of universal disintegration we are traversing, and it is
necessary to be resigned to living from hand to mouth without too
much concern for a future we cannot control.
The second of the dangers referred to above--the inevitable
restrictions on liberty consummated by parliamentary
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