The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: gulf set between us, you will still be the mainspring of all my
actions, and all the virtues are inspired by penitence and love.
Though you have filled my heart with bitterness, I shall never have
bitter thoughts of you; would it not be an ill beginning of the new
tasks that I have set myself if I did not purge out all the evil
leaven from my soul? Farewell, then, to the one heart that I love in
the world, a heart from which I am cast out. Never has more feeling
and more tenderness been expressed in a farewell, for is it not
fraught with the life and soul of one who can never hope again, and
must be henceforth as one dead? . . . Farewell. May peace be with you,
and may all the sorrow of our lot fall to me!' "
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . .
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . .
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