| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: are quite right in their attitude. Art is Individualism, and
Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein
lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony
of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of
man to the level of a machine. In Art, the public accept what has
been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it.
They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them. They
endure them as the inevitable, and as they cannot mar them, they
mouth about them. Strangely enough, or not strangely, according to
one's own views, this acceptance of the classics does a great deal
of harm. The uncritical admiration of the Bible and Shakespeare in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: Tai-o-hae, so strange a figure of a European. Or perhaps from
yet further back, sounds and scents of England and his
childhood might assail him: the merry clamour of cathedral
bells, the broom upon the foreland, the song of the river on the
weir.
It is bold water at the mouth of the bay; you can steer a ship
about either sentinel, close enough to toss a biscuit on the
rocks. Thus it chanced that, as the tattooed man sat dozing and
dreaming, he was startled into wakefulness and animation by
the appearance of a flying jib beyond the western islet. Two
more headsails followed; and before the tattooed man had
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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 Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder,
and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in
galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black
coffin.
Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a
besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some
rumour of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge
their curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he
divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear - solitary
people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of
the past, and now startingly recalled from that tender exercise;
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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 The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: was a pit pat, paddle pat! and the
three Puddle-ducks came along the
hard high road, marching one behind
the other and doing the goose step--
pit pat, paddle pat! pit pat, waddle
pat!
They stopped and stood in a row
and stared up at the kittens. They had
very small eyes and looked surprised.
Then the two duck-birds, Rebeccah
and Jemima Puddle-duck, picked up
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