| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: predominant intellectual activity is employed in achievements
which are mainly of a material character. Military barbarism, or
the inability of communities to live together without frequent
warfare, has been nearly outgrown by the whole Western world.
Private wars, long since made everywhere illegal, have nearly
ceased; and public wars, once continual, have become infrequent.
But industrial barbarism, by which I mean the inability of a
community to direct a portion of its time to purposes of
spiritual life, after providing for its physical
maintenance,--this kind of barbarism the modern world has by no
means outgrown. To-day, the great work of life is to live; while
 The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: her to discover the philosopher's stone. Some even more envenomed
scandals drove her to a curiosity that was greater than Psyche's. She
reported them in tears to Paz.
"When I want to injure a woman," she said in conclusion, "I don't
calumniate her; I don't declare that some one magnetizes her to get
stones out of her, but I say plainly that she is humpbacked, and I
prove it. Why do you compromise me in this way?"
Paz maintained a cruel silence. Madame Chapuzot was not long in
discovering the name and title of Comte Paz; then she heard certain
positive facts at the hotel Laginski: for instance, that Paz was a
bachelor, and had never been known to have a daughter, alive or dead,
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