| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: ground seems washing out under your feet--." She paused. "Such a time has
come to me now. If you would promise me that if ever another woman comes
to seek your help, you will give it to her, and try to love her for my
sake, I think it will help me. I think I should be able to keep my faith."
"Oh, I will do anything you ask me to. You are so good and great."
"Oh, good and great!--if you knew! Now go, dear."
"I have not kept you from your work, have I?"
"No; I have not been working lately. Good-by, dear."
The younger woman went; and the elder knelt down by the chair, and wailed
like a little child when you have struck it and it does not dare to cry
loud.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: and feeling. He means to say that the words 'loved of the gods' express an
attribute only, and not the essence of piety.
Then follows the third and last definition, 'Piety is a part of justice.'
Thus far Socrates has proceeded in placing religion on a moral foundation.
He is seeking to realize the harmony of religion and morality, which the
great poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Pindar had unconsciously anticipated,
and which is the universal want of all men. To this the soothsayer adds
the ceremonial element, 'attending upon the gods.' When further
interrogated by Socrates as to the nature of this 'attention to the gods,'
he replies, that piety is an affair of business, a science of giving and
asking, and the like. Socrates points out the anthropomorphism of these
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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 The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: Early-Victorian-Christian. His country house at
Dulwich-on-the-Sound
was a palace of the Italian Renaissance. But in town
he adhered to an architecture which had moral associations,
the Nineteenth-Century-Brownstone epoch. It was a symbol of
his social position, his religious doctrine, and even, in a way,
of his business creed.
"A man of fixed principles," he would say, "should express them
in
the looks of his house. New York changes its domestic
architecture
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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 Finished by H. Rider Haggard: my hunting knife with my right hand. At that moment the
lightning, which I thought had quite gone by, flashed again for
the last time, revealing the fat face of the Basuto captain
within a foot of my own, for he was turned towards the wall on
which one of his hands rested. Moreover, the blue and ghastly
light revealed mine to him thrust forward between the two stones,
my eyes glaring at him.
"The head of a dead man is set upon the wall!" he cried in
terror. "It is the ghost of--"
He got no further, for as the last word passed his lips I drove
the knife at him with all my strength deep into his throat. He
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