The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: in the hands of President Barbicane.
It was couched in the following terms:
_The Director of the Cambridge Observatory to the President
of the Gun Club at Baltimore._
CAMBRIDGE, October 7.
On the receipt of your favor of the 6th instant, addressed to
the Observatory of Cambridge in the name of the members of the
Baltimore Gun Club, our staff was immediately called together,
and it was judged expedient to reply as follows:
The questions which have been proposed to it are these--
"1. Is it possible to transmit a projectile up to the moon?
From the Earth to the Moon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: propensities which prompt its nobler actions, rather than the
petty passions which disturb or the vices which disgrace it.
The time may be already anticipated at which the American
Republics will be obliged to introduce the plan of election by an
elected body more frequently into their system of representation,
or they will incur no small risk of perishing miserably amongst
the shoals of democracy.
And here I have no scruple in confessing that I look upon
this peculiar system of election as the only means of bringing
the exercise of political power to the level of all classes of
the people. Those thinkers who regard this institution as the
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