| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: the dreams of my youth and the hopes of my manhood were completely fulfilled.
The bonds that had held me to "old master" were broken. No man now
had a right to call me his slave or assert mastery over me. I was
in the rough and tumble of an outdoor world, to take my chance with
the rest of its busy number. I have often been asked how I felt
when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything
in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer.
A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the
"quick round of blood," I lived more in that one day than in a year
of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words
can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: SOCRATES: I will tell you; the kingly art was identified by us with the
political.
CRITO: Well, and what came of that?
SOCRATES: To this royal or political art all the arts, including the art
of the general, seemed to render up the supremacy, that being the only one
which knew how to use what they produce. Here obviously was the very art
which we were seeking--the art which is the source of good government, and
which may be described, in the language of Aeschylus, as alone sitting at
the helm of the vessel of state, piloting and governing all things, and
utilizing them.
CRITO: And were you not right, Socrates?
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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 Confidence by Henry James: be sorry to trouble Bernard to follow him about. He had put him to this
inconvenience in making him travel from Venice to Baden, and one such
favor at a time was enough to ask, even of the most obliging of men.
Bernard was, of course, afraid that what he had told Gordon about Angela
Vivian was really the cause of a state of things which, as between
two such good friends, wore a perceptible resemblance to alienation.
Gordon had given her up; but he bore Bernard a grudge for speaking
ill of her, and so long as this disagreeable impression should last,
he preferred not to see him. Bernard was frank enough to charge
the poor fellow with a lingering rancor, of which he made, indeed,
no great crime. But Gordon denied the allegation, and assured him that,
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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 The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: so, when that system is abolished, will disappear. When each
member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not
interfered with by his neighbour, it will not be an object of any
interest to him to interfere with anyone else. Jealousy, which is
an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion
closely bound up with our conceptions of property, and under
Socialism and Individualism will die out. It is remarkable that in
communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown.
Now as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what the State
is to do. The State is to be a voluntary association that will
organise labour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of
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