| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: kept that most jealously out of sight; and I did the
same with my naval academy which I had established
at a remote seaport. Both were prospering to my
satisfaction.
Clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head
executive, my right hand. He was a darling; he was
equal to anything; there wasn't anything he couldn't
turn his hand to. Of late I had been training him for
journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start
in the newspaper line; nothing big, but just a small
weekly for experimental circulation in my civilization-
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: for freedom and embrace it when it is offered to them. On the
contrary, it has to be forced on them; and even then they will give it
the slip if it is not religiously inculcated and strongly safeguarded.
Besides, men are born docile, and must in the nature of things remain
so with regard to everything they do not understand. Now political
science and the art of govemment are among the things they do not
understand, and indeed are not at present allowed to understand. They
can be enslaved by a system, as we are at present, because it happens
to be there, and nobody understands it. An intelligently worked
Capitalist system, as Comte saw, would give us all that most of us are
intelligent enough to want. What makes it produce such unspeakably
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