| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: And ere bright Titan half his course had run,
That camp, that mighty host to show begun.
LVIII
Tents infinite, and standards broad he spies,
This red, that white, that blue, this purple was,
And hears strange tongues, and stranger harmonies
Of trumpets, clarions, and well-sounding brass:
The elephant there brays, the camel cries.
The horses neigh as to and fro they pass:
Which seen and heard, he said within his thought,
Hither all Asia is, all Afric, brought.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: as described by Mr. Prudent and Mr. Evans. What Robur, the Conqueror,
had done with his first airship, he could do even more readily with
this quadruple machine.
At length the first rays of daylight brightened my cabin. Would I be
permitted to go out now, to take my place upon the deck, as I had
done upon Lake Erie?
I pushed upon the hatchway: it opened. I came half way out upon the
deck.
All about was sky and sea. We floated in the air above an ocean, at a
height which I judged to be about a thousand or twelve hundred feet.
I could not see Robur, so he was probably in the engine room. Turner
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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 Meno by Plato: for oneself or another, or in other words the want of them, may be equally
virtue?
MENO: True.
SOCRATES: Then the acquisition of such goods is no more virtue than the
non-acquisition and want of them, but whatever is accompanied by justice or
honesty is virtue, and whatever is devoid of justice is vice.
MENO: It cannot be otherwise, in my judgment.
SOCRATES: And were we not saying just now that justice, temperance, and
the like, were each of them a part of virtue?
MENO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And so, Meno, this is the way in which you mock me.
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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 La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: me! then think of your poor mother who died smiling before your eyes,
hiding her sufferings from you, and you will take courage to endure
the ills of life."
She choked back her tears, and tried to make the boy understand the
mechanism of existence, the value of money, the standing and
consideration that it gives, and its bearing on social position; the
honorable means of gaining a livelihood, and the necessity of a
training. Then she told him that one of the chief causes of her
sadness and her tears was the thought that, on the morrow of her
death, he and Marie would be left almost resourceless, with but a
slender stock of money, and no friend but God.
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