| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: and with such perilous rapture, to dwell, I found a gentle calm
settling over me. "If debarred from love, why not seek for happiness?"
I said to myself. "Moreover, I am loved, and the love offered me I
shall accept. My married life will be no slavery, but rather a
perpetual reign. What is there to say against such a situation for a
woman who wishes to remain absolute mistress of herself?"
The important point of separating marriage from marital rights was
settled in a conversation between Louis and me, in the course of which
he gave proof of an excellent temper and a tender heart. Darling, my
desire was to prolong that fair season of hope which, never
culminating in satisfaction, leaves to the soul its virginity. To
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: all--appeal with full right to the Constitution: Each paragraph of the
Constitution contains its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower
House-freedom as a generalization, the abolition of freedom as a
specification. Accordingly, so long as the name of freedom was
respected, and only its real enforcement was prevented in a legal way,
of course the constitutional existence of freedom remained uninjured,
untouched, however completely its common existence might be
extinguished.
This Constitution, so ingeniously made invulnerable, was, however, like
Achilles, vulnerable at one point: not in its heel, but in its head, or
rather, in the two heads into which it ran out-the Legislative Assembly,
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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 Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: beaten. I tried to break Paul's hold on the root, but he resisted me fiercely.
Then I lost my breath and came to the surface, badly scared. I quickly
explained the situation, and half a dozen of us went down and by main strength
tore them loose. By the time we got them out, both were unconscious, and it
was only after much barrel-rolling and rubbing and pounding that they finally
came to their senses. They would have drowned there, had no one rescued them.
When Paul Tichlorne entered college, he let it be generally understood that he
was going in for the social sciences. Lloyd Inwood, entering at the same time,
elected to take the same course. But Paul had had it secretly in mind all the
time to study the natural sciences, specializing on chemistry, and at the last
moment he switched over. Though Lloyd had already arranged his year's work and
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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 God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: and he does not seem to realise that that phrase carries with it no
obligation whatever to believe that this Friend is in control of the
phenomena. He assumes that he is supposed to be in control as if it
were a matter of course:
"We do seem to find," Professor Murray writes, "not only in all
religions, but in practically all philosophies, some belief that man
is not quite alone in the universe, but is met in his endeavours
towards the good by some external help or sympathy. We find it
everywhere in the unsophisticated man. We find it in the unguarded
self-revelations of the most severe and conscientious Atheists.
Now, the Stoics, like many other schools of thought, drew an
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