| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: another. For one (theophiles) is of a kind to be loved cause it is loved,
and the other (osion) is loved because it is of a kind to be loved. Thus
you appear to me, Euthyphro, when I ask you what is the essence of
holiness, to offer an attribute only, and not the essence--the attribute of
being loved by all the gods. But you still refuse to explain to me the
nature of holiness. And therefore, if you please, I will ask you not to
hide your treasure, but to tell me once more what holiness or piety really
is, whether dear to the gods or not (for that is a matter about which we
will not quarrel); and what is impiety?
EUTHYPHRO: I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean.
For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: bound ultimately to meet at the top.
Even that opposition often made by males to the entrance of woman into the
new fields of labour, of which they at present hold the monopoly, is not
fundamentally sexual in its nature. The male who opposes the entrance of
woman into the trade or profession in which he holds more or less a
monopoly, would oppose with equal, and perhaps even greater bitterness, the
opening of its doors to numbers of his own sex who had before been
excluded, and who would limit his gains and share his privileges. It is
the primitive brute instinct to retain as much as possible for the ego,
irrespective of justice or humanity, which dominates all the lower moral
types of humanity, both male and female, which acts here. The lawyer or
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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 The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: to buy. In America, for instance, we had a Senate, a
"Millionaire's Club", for admission to which the members paid in
cash; but in England the same men came to the same position as
their birth-right. Political corruption is not an end in itself,
it is merely a means to exploitation; and of exploitation England
has even more than America. When I explained this, my popularity
with the British ruling classes vanished quickly.
As a matter of fact, England is more like America than she
realizes; her British reticence has kept her ignorant about
herself. I could not carry on my business in England, because of
the libel laws, which have as their first principle "the greater
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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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: that night the white man and the black lay there dead together, side by
side. Both those men were of my friends."
"It was damned plucky of the nigger," said Peter; "but I've heard of their
doing that sort of thing before. Even of a girl who wouldn't tell where
her mistress was, and getting killed. But," he added doubtfully, "all your
company seem to be niggers or to get killed?"
"They are of all races," said the stranger. "In a city in the old Colony
is one of us, small of stature and small of voice. It came to pass on a
certain Sunday morning, when the men and women were gathered before him,
that he mounted his pulpit: and he said when the time for the sermon came,
'In place that I should speak to you, I will read you a history.' And he
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