| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: a volume of sonnets up your sleeve; when is it coming down? I am
in one of my moods of wholesale impatience with all fiction and all
verging on it, reading instead, with rapture, FOUNTAINHALL'S
DECISIONS. You never read it: well, it hasn't much form, and is
inexpressibly dreary, I should suppose, to others - and even to me
for pages. It's like walking in a mine underground, and with a
damned bad lantern, and picking out pieces of ore. This, and war,
will be my excuse for not having read your (doubtless) charming
work of fiction. The revolving year will bring me round to it; and
I know, when fiction shall begin to feel a little SOLID to me
again, that I shall love it, because it's James. Do you know, when
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White:
They knew him first by the soft lowing of cattle. Jed Parker,
dazzled by the lamp, peered out from the door, and made him out
dimly turning the animals into the corral. A moment later his
pony's hoofs impacted softly on the baked earth, he dropped from
the saddle and entered the room.
"I'm late," said he briefly, glancing at the clock, which
indicated ten; "but I'm here."
His manner was quick and sharp, almost breathless, as though he
had been running.
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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 Dreams by Olive Schreiner: Lilliputian mouth to drink from a cup too large for it, and they saw how
the water spilt; they saw its hopes that were never realized; they saw its
hours of intellectual blindness, men call sin; they saw its hours of all-
radiating insight, which men call righteousness; they saw its hour of
strength, when it leaped to its feet crying, "I am omnipotent;" its hour of
weakness, when it fell to the earth and grasped dust only; they saw what it
might have been, but never would be.
The man bent forward.
And the angel said, "What is it?"
He answered, "It is I! it is myself!" And he went forward as if he would
have lain his heart against it; but the angel held him back and covered his
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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 Euthyphro by Plato: Republic II. The virtue of piety has been already mentioned as one of five
in the Protagoras, but is not reckoned among the four cardinal virtues of
Republic IV. The figure of Daedalus has occurred in the Meno; that of
Proteus in the Euthydemus and Io. The kingly science has already appeared
in the Euthydemus, and will reappear in the Republic and Statesman. But
neither from these nor any other indications of similarity or difference,
and still less from arguments respecting the suitableness of this little
work to aid Socrates at the time of his trial or the reverse, can any
evidence of the date be obtained.
EUTHYPHRO
by
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