| 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: Oh, if God granted that any congregation at all heard mass and
prayed in this way, so that a common earnest heart-cry of the
entire people would rise up to God, what immeasurable virtue and
help would result from such a prayer! What more terrible thing
could happen to all the evil spirits? What greater work could be
done on earth, whereby so many pious souls would be preserved,
so many sinners converted?
For, indeed, the Christian Church on earth has no greater power
or work than such common prayer against everything that may
oppose it. This the evil spirit knows well, and therefore he does
all that he can to prevent such prayer. Gleefully he lets us go
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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 Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: Today, thirty years would be an inadequate estimate, for
some factories, like the Votkinsky, have been purposely
ruined by the Whites, in others the lathes and other
machinery for building and repairing locomotives are worn
out, many of the skilled engineers were killed in the war with
Germany, many others in defending the revolution, and it
will be long before it will be possible to restore to the
workmen or to the factories the favorable material
conditions of 1912-13. Thus the main fact in the present
crisis is that Russia possesses one-fifth of the number of
locomotives which in 1914 was just sufficient to maintain
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