The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: wickedness to be resisted and overcome at any cost, but merely as
a nerve-racking experience. Guns were going off on both sides.
The Genteel Whig was chiefly conscious of a repulsive vast
excitement all about him, in which many people did inelegant and
irrational things. They waved flags--nasty little flags. This
child of the ages, this last fruit of the gigantic and tragic
tree of life, could no more than stick its fingers in its ears as
say, "Oh, please, do /all/ stop!" and then as the strain
grew intenser and intenser set itself with feeble pawings now to
clamber "Au-dessus de la Melee," and now to--in some
weak way--stop the conflict. ("Au-dessus de la
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: "I beg your pardon," he said, snubbed. "I thought--Don't you
think it dangerous to sit on that damp wall?"
"It is not damp. It is crumbling into dust with dryness." An
unnatural laugh, with which she concluded, intensified his
uneasiness.
He began a sentence, stopped, and to gain time to recover
himself, placed his bicycle in the opposite ditch; a proceeding
which she witnessed with impatience, as it indicated his
intention to stay and talk. She, however, was the first to speak;
and she did so with a callousness that shocked him.
"Have you heard the news?"
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