| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: marines, of Laconian breed; but who will the sailors be? Helots
obviously, or mercenaries of some sort. These are the folk over whom
you will exercise your leadership. Reverse the case. The
Lacedaemonians have issued a general order summoning you to join them
in the field; it is plain again, you will be sending your heavy
infantry and your cavalry. You see what follows. You have invented a
pretty machine, by which they become leders of your very selves, and
you become the leaders either of their slaves or of the dregs of their
state. I should like to put a question to the Lacedaemonian Timocrates
seated yonder. Did you not say just now, Sir, that you came to make an
alliance on terms of absolute equality, 'share and share alike'?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: silk handkerchief, and shoes tied up in bowknots.
"'Afternoon!' says I to him. 'You now ride with a equestrian who is
commonly called Dead-Moral-Certainty Judson, on account of the way I
shoot. When I want a stranger to know me I always introduce myself
before the draw, for I never did like to shake hands with ghosts.'
"'Ah,' says he, just like that--'Ah, I'm glad to know you, Mr. Judson.
I'm Jackson Bird, from over at Mired Mule Ranch.'
"Just then one of my eyes saw a roadrunner skipping down the hill with
a young tarantula in his bill, and the other eye noticed a rabbit-hawk
sitting on a dead limb in a water-elm. I popped over one after the
other with my forty-five, just to show him. 'Two out of three,' says
Heart of the West |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: nonsense. DO be nice to me."
"There are stains of sweat on it, I know."
"You nasty wretch!"
"I am thinking, not of you, my dainty one, but of the unfortunate
people who slave that we may live idly. Let me explain to you why
we are so rich. My father was a shrewd, energetic, and ambitious
Manchester man, who understood an exchange of any sort as a
transaction by which one man should lose and the other gain. He
made it his object to make as many exchanges as possible, and to
be always the gaining party in them. I do not know exactly what
he was, for he was ashamed both of his antecedents and of his
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: system was working, or at least so it seemed to him.
At first Levin had thought of giving up the whole farming of the
land just as it was to the peasants, the laborers, and the
bailiff on new conditions of partnership; but he was very soon
convinced that this was impossible, and determined to divide it
up. The cattle-yard, the garden, hay-fields, and arable land,
divided into several parts, had to be made into separate lots.
The simple-hearted cowherd, Ivan, who, Levin fancied, understood
the matter better than any of them, collecting together a gang of
workers to help him, principally of his own family, became a
partner in the cattle-yard. A distant part of the estate, a tract
Anna Karenina |
