| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed
no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause
of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less
fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray
to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's
assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces;
but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both
Second Inaugural Address |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: Silas now told his story, under frequent questioning as the
mysterious character of the robbery became evident.
This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his Raveloe
neighbours, of sitting in the warmth of a hearth not his own, and
feeling the presence of faces and voices which were his nearest
promise of help, had doubtless its influence on Marner, in spite of
his passionate preoccupation with his loss. Our consciousness
rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than
without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we
detect the smallest sign of the bud.
The slight suspicion with which his hearers at first listened to
Silas Marner |
