| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal
relations of property became no longer compatible with the
already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters.
They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a
social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the
economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern
bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange
and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic
means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: Until the Emancipation, we gave our English friends no public, official
grounds for their sympathy, and consequently their influence over our
English enemies was hampered. Instantly after January 1, 1863, that
sympathy became the deciding voice. Our enemies could no longer say to
it, "but Lincoln says himself that he doesn't intend to abolish slavery."
Here are examples of what occurred: To William Lloyd Garrison, the
Abolitionist, an English sympathizer wrote that three thousand men of
Manchester had met there and adopted by acclamation an enthusiastic
message to Lincoln. These men said that they would rather remain unem-
ployed for twenty years than get cotton from the South at the expense of
the slave. A month later Cobden writes to Charles Sumner: "I know nothing
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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 Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: father, you will be no more heard of. Think of this person, and
that person; think of Hua, who was a noble of the House of
Representatives, and went to Honolulu every year; and not a bone or
a hair of him was found. Remember Kamau, and how he wasted to a
thread, so that his wife lifted him with one hand. Keola, you are
a baby in my father's hands; he will take you with his thumb and
finger and eat you like a shrimp."
Now Keola was truly afraid of Kalamake, but he was vain too; and
these words of his wife's incensed him.
"Very well," said he, "if that is what you think of me, I will show
how much you are deceived." And he went straight to where 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 Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: though it often seems to hold them loosely.
In France, where remnants of every age are still so
strangely mingled in the opinions and tastes of the people, women
commonly receive a reserved, retired, and almost cloistral
education, as they did in aristocratic times; and then they are
suddenly abandoned, without a guide and without assistance, in
the midst of all the irregularities inseparable from democratic
society. The Americans are more consistent. They have found out
that in a democracy the independence of individuals cannot fail
to be very great, youth premature, tastes ill-restrained, customs
fleeting, public opinion often unsettled and powerless, paternal
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