| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: your life. It seems hardly possible that the British army at the
battle of Waterloo did not include at least one Englishman
intelligent enough to hope, for the sake of his country and
humanity, that Napoleon might defeat the allied sovereigns; but
such an Englishman would kill a French cuirassier rather than be
killed by him just as energetically as the silliest soldier, ever
encouraged by people who ought to know better, to call his
ignorance, ferocity and folly, patriotism and duty. Outworn life
may have become mere error; but it still claims the right to die
a natural death, and will raise its hand against the millennium
itself in self-defence if it tries to come by the short cut of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: light of day. Since before, they tell us, the Spartan men, out of
shame at their disasters, did not dare so much as to look their
wives in the face.
When Epaminondas restored Messene, and recalled from all quarters
the ancient citizens to inhabit it, they were not able to obstruct
the design, being not in condition of appearing in the field
against them. But it went greatly against Agesilaus in the minds
of his countrymen, when they found so large a territory, equal to
their own in compass, and for fertility the richest of all Greece,
which they had enjoyed so long, taken from them in his reign.
Therefore it was that the king broke off treaty with the Thebans,
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