| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: the scruff of the neck." Have you ever read what our own fleet was like
in those days? Or our Army? Lucky it was for us that we had to deal only
with Spain. And even the Spanish fleet would have been a much graver
opponent in Manila Bay, but for Lord Cromer. On its way from Spain
through the Suez Canal a formidable part of Spain's navy stopped to coal
at Port Said. There is a law about the coaling of belligerent warships in
neutral ports. Lord Cromer could have construed that law just as well
against us. His construction brought it about that those Spanish ships
couldn't get to Manila Bay in time to take part against Admiral Dewey.
The Spanish War revealed that our Navy could hit eight times out of a
hundred, and was in other respects unprepared and utterly inadequate to
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think,
therefore I am (COGITO ERGO SUM), was so certain and of such evidence that
no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics
capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept
it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search
In the next place, I attentively examined what I was and as I observed
that I could suppose that I had no body, and that there was no world nor
any place in which I might be; but that I could not therefore suppose that
I was not; and that, on the contrary, from the very circumstance that I
thought to doubt of the truth of other things, it most clearly and
certainly followed that I was; while, on the other hand, if I had only
 Reason Discourse |