| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: His grace freely, and wills that we begin by trusting that grace,
and in it perform all works, whatever they may be.
XII. Note for yourself, then, how far apart these two are:
keeping the First Commandment with outward works only, and
keeping it with inward trust. For this last makes true, living
children of God, the other only makes worse idolatry and the most
mischievous hypocrites on earth, who with their apparent
righteousness lead unnumbered people into their way, and yet
allow them to be without faith, so that they are miserably
misled, and are caught in the pitiable babbling and mummery. Of
such Christ says, Matthew xxiv: "Beware, if any man shall say
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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 Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: seem to be meant to outlast love, or to change it into something
different." If she could have hoped to make Strefford
understand that, the letter would have been easy enough to
write--but she knew just at what point his imagination would
fail, in what obvious and superficial inferences it would rest
"Poor Streff--poor me!" she thought as she sealed the letter.
After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on
her. She had succeeded in driving from her mind all vain
hesitations, doubts, returns upon herself: her healthy system
naturally rejected them. But they left a queer emptiness in
which her thoughts rattled about as thoughts might, she
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: the rock, recover its equanimity; then you will see a pellucid
gelatinous flesh emerging from between the plates, and little
exquisitely formed and coloured tentacula, with white clubbed tips
fringing the sides of the cup-shaped cavity in the centre, across
which stretches the oval disc marked with a star of some rich and
brilliant colour, surrounding the central mouth, a slit with white
crenated lips, like the orifice of one of those elegant cowry
shells which we put upon our mantelpieces. The mouth is always
more or less prominent, and can be protruded and expanded to an
astonishing extent. The space surrounding the lips is commonly
fawn colour, or rich chestnut-brown; the star or vandyked circle
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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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: a mistress, and the jealousy of a wife. She was miserable away from
him, uneasy at his absence, could never see him enough, and loved only
through him and for him. To make men understand the strength of this
feeling, it suffices to add that the son was not only the sole child
of Madame de Dey, but also her last relation, the only being in the
world to whom the fears and hopes and joys of her life could be
naturally attached.
The late Comte de Dey was the last surviving scion of his family, and
she herself was the sole heiress of her own. Human interests and
projects combined, therefore, with the noblest deeds of the soul to
exalt in this mother's heart a sentiment that is always so strong in
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