| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: I suppose not.
SOCRATES: Nor men by women when they do their own work?
ALCIBIADES: No.
SOCRATES: Nor are states well administered, when individuals do their own
work?
ALCIBIADES: I should rather think, Socrates, that the reverse is the
truth. (Compare Republic.)
SOCRATES: What! do you mean to say that states are well administered when
friendship is absent, the presence of which, as we were saying, alone
secures their good order?
ALCIBIADES: But I should say that there is friendship among them, for this
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: meets - only the portraits were not there: the men who afterwards sat
for them were then but beginning their career. The same lustre of many
tapers shed its light over the meeting; the same chair, perhaps,
supported him that so many of us have sat in since. At times he seemed
to forget the business of the evening, but even in these periods he sat
with a great air of energy and determination. At times he meddled
bitterly, and launched with defiance those fines which are the precious
and rarely used artillery of the president. He little thought, as he
did so, how he resembled his father, but his friends remarked upon it,
chuckling. So far, in his high place above his fellow-students, he
seemed set beyond the possibility of any scandal; but his mind was made
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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 An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: to.
LORD CAVERSHAM. What about, sir?
LORD GORING. About me, father,
LORD CAVERSHAM. [Grimly.] Not a subject on which much eloquence is
possible.
LORD GORING. No, father; but the lady is like me. She doesn't care
much for eloquence in others. She thinks it a little loud.
[LORD CAVERSHAM goes out into the conservatory. LADY CHILTERN
enters.]
LORD GORING. Lady Chiltern, why are you playing Mrs. Cheveley's
cards?
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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 Before Adam by Jack London: that I saw an oak tree. As I looked at the leaves and
branches and gnarls, it came to me with distressing
vividness that I had seen that same kind of tree many
and countless times n my sleep. So I was not
surprised, still later on in my life, to recognize
instantly, the first time I saw them, trees such as the
spruce, the yew, the birch, and the laurel. I had seen
them all before, and was seeing them even then, every
night, in my sleep.
This, as you have already discerned, violates the first
law of dreaming, namely, that in one's dreams one sees
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