| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: footsteps of time we shall really be progressing in the order
sanctioned by reason.
CHAPTER II
AT an early period in their intellectual development the Greeks
reached that critical point in the history of every civilised
nation, when speculative invades the domain of revealed truth, when
the spiritual ideas of the people can no longer be satisfied by the
lower, material conceptions of their inspired writers, and when men
find it impossible to pour the new wine of free thought into the
old bottles of a narrow and a trammelling creed.
From their Aryan ancestors they had received the fatal legacy of a
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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 Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: show of right or by a subterfuge, yet with injury to his neighbor. For
above, in the Seventh Commandment, the vice is forbidden where one
wrests to himself the possessions of others, or withholds them from his
neighbor, which he cannot do by right. But here it is also forbidden to
alienate anything from your neighbor, even though you could do so with
honor in the eyes of the world, so that no one could accuse or blame
you as though you had obtained it wrongfully.
For we are so inclined by nature that no one desires to see another
have as much as himself, and each one acquires as much as he can; the
other may fare as best he can. And yet we pretend to be godly, know how
to adorn ourselves most finely and conceal our rascality, resort to and
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