| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: 'you want to know about Petunias. They opened at 85 I see.' He then ran
the tape from the ticker through his clean strong hands. 'Here they are
again. Five thousand sold at 83. Now, if they go to 70, I'll very likely
take ten thousand more for mother. It's all Frank Smith's bluff, you
know. He wants a jag of the water-works stock, more than they say they
agreed he should have. So he's shaking this bill over them, which would
allow the city to build its own water-plant, and of course run the
present company out of business. Not a thing in it! All bluff. He'll get
the stock, I suppose. What's that?' he broke off to a clerk who came with
a message. 'Wants 500 preferred does he? Buyer 30? Very well, he can't
have it. Say so from me. Now,' he resumed to me, 'take a cigar by the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: volumes has been to represent Plato as the father of Idealism, who is not
to be measured by the standard of utilitarianism or any other modern
philosophical system. He is the poet or maker of ideas, satisfying the
wants of his own age, providing the instruments of thought for future
generations. He is no dreamer, but a great philosophical genius struggling
with the unequal conditions of light and knowledge under which he is
living. He may be illustrated by the writings of moderns, but he must be
interpreted by his own, and by his place in the history of philosophy. We
are not concerned to determine what is the residuum of truth which remains
for ourselves. His truth may not be our truth, and nevertheless may have
an extraordinary value and interest for us.
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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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: Dictionary," or if you know your "Shakespeare," you will see that
Thrift signified originally profits, gain, riches gotten--in a
word, the marks of a man's thriving.
How, then, did the word Thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality,
the opposite of waste? Just in the same way as economy--which
first, of course, meant the management of a household--got to mean
also the opposite of waste.
It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in any process, in
fact, men throve in proportion as they saved their capital, their
material, their force.
Now this is a great law which runs through life; one of those laws
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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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: you do still feel in the same way?"
It was impossible he shouldn't take to himself that she was really
interested, though it all kept coining as a perfect surprise. He
had thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he
wasn't alone a bit. He hadn't been, it appeared, for an hour--
since those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been,
he seemed to see as he looked at her--she who had been made so by
the graceless fact of his lapse of fidelity. To tell her what he
had told her--what had it been but to ask something of her?
something that she had given, in her charity, without his having,
by a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing another
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