| 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: mistaking the result of training and external circumstance for inherent
tendency, but when we consider the passion for music which the German has
shown, and when we consider that the greatest musicians the world has seen,
from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to Wagner, have been of that race, it
appears highly probable that such a correlation between the German
organisation and the intellectual gift of music does exist. Similar
intellectual peculiarities seem to be connoted by the external differences
which mark off other races from each other. Nevertheless, were persons of
all of these nationalities gathered in one colony, any attempt to legislate
for their restriction to certain forms of intellectual labour on the ground
of their apparently proved national aptitudes or disabilities, would be
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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 Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: marquise. He would be capable of doing something handsome for my
eldest boy.
I shall sell out of the funds as soon as they are up to eighty,
and invest in land. Thus, in two years I may look to get six
hundred thousand francs a year out of real estate. So, you see,
Paul, I do not give my friends advice that I am not ready to act
upon.
If you had but listened to me, you would have an English wife,
some Nabob's daughter, who would leave you the freedom of a
bachelor and the independence necessary for playing the whist of
ambition. I would concede my future wife to you if you were not
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