| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: Jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when the thing
Tom wanted was passed over the people's heads till it
got to him, he says to Jubiter:
"Put up your foot on this chair." And he kneeled down
and begun to unscrew the heel-plate, everybody watching;
and when he got that big di'mond out of that boot-heel
and held it up and let it flash and blaze and squirt
sunlight everwhichaway, it just took everybody's breath;
and Jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never see
the like of it. And when Tom held up the other di'mond
he looked sorrier than ever. Land! he was thinking how
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: France; but judging from the appearance of the French people I should
say that a Frenchwoman goes into mourning for her cousins to the
seventeenth degree. The result is that when I cross the Channel I
seem to have reached a country devastated by war or pestilence. It is
really suffering only from the family. Will anyone pretend that
England has not the best of this striking difference? Yet it is such
senseless and unnatural conventions as this that make us so impatient
of what we call family feeling. Even apart from its insufferable
pretensions, the family needs hearty discrediting; for there is hardly
any vulnerable part of it that could not be amputated with advantage.
Art Teaching
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: make peace. Now, men should fight and make peace on just grounds, and
therefore the question of justice and injustice must enter into peace and
war; and he who advises the Athenians must know the difference between
them. Does Alcibiades know? If he does, he must either have been taught
by some master, or he must have discovered the nature of them himself. If
he has had a master, Socrates would like to be informed who he is, that he
may go and learn of him also. Alcibiades admits that he has never learned.
Then has he enquired for himself? He may have, if he was ever aware of a
time when he was ignorant. But he never was ignorant; for when he played
with other boys at dice, he charged them with cheating, and this implied a
knowledge of just and unjust. According to his own explanation, he had
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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 The United States Bill of Rights: III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house,
without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war,
but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath
or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched,
and the persons or things to be seized.
V
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