| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: of literature, remained stationary, or rather receded and
degenerated, till the end of the eighteenth century.
And so it may be with our means of locomotion and intercommunion,
and what depends on them. The vast and unprecedented amount of
capital, of social interest, of actual human intellect invested--I
may say locked up--in these railroads, and telegraphs, and other
triumphs of industry and science, will not enter into competition
against themselves. They will not set themselves free to seek new
discoveries in directions which are often actually opposed to their
own, always foreign to it. If the money of thousands are locked up
in these great works, the brains of hundreds of thousands, and 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 Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.
CIX
O! never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify,
As easy might I from my self depart
As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have rang'd,
Like him that travels, I return again;
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