| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: wonderment. Now, I know it all too plainly from my own experience,
Simonides, and I assure you, the tyrant is one who has the smallest
share of life's blessings, whilst of its greater miseries he possesses
most.
[4] Lit. "the majority of things"; al. "the thousand details of a
thing."
For instance, if peace is held to be a mighty blessing to mankind,
then of peace despotic monarchs are scant sharers. Or is war a curse?
If so, of this particular pest your monarch shares the largest moiety.
For, look you, the private citizen, unless his city-state should
chance to be engaged in some common war,[5] is free to travel
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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 Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: uncongenial soil, to lead a starved, stunted existence, there is
always a little discomfort over the transition. Then, gradually, if
nothing removes him from his surroundings, he grows accustomed to
them, and adapts himself to the vacuity which grows upon him and
renders him powerless. Even now, Gaston's lungs were accustomed to the
air; and he was willing to discern a kind of vegetable happiness in
days that brought no mental exertion and no responsibilities. The
constant stirring of the sap of life, the fertilizing influences of
mind on mind, after which he had sought so eagerly in Paris, were
beginning to fade from his memory, and he was in a fair way of
becoming a fossil with these fossils, and ending his days among them,
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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 Agesilaus by Xenophon: strength, while as near as could be the cavalry on either side was
numerically the same. Agesilaus held the right of his own army, and on
his extreme left lay the men of Orchomenus. On the opposite side the
Thebans themselves formed their own right and the Argives held their
left. While the two armies approached a deep silence prevailed on
either side, but when they were now a single furlong's[7] space apart
the Thebans quickened to a run, and, with a loud hurrah, dashed
forward to close quarters. And now there was barely a hundred yards[8]
between them, when Herippidas, with his foreign brigade, rushed
forward from the Spartan's battle lines to meet them. This brigade
consisted partly of troops which had served with Agesilaus ever since
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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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon: the text of the law, the judge in his professional severity would
visit with the same penalty the burglar guilty of murder and the
wretched girl whom poverty and her abandonment by her seducer
have driven to infanticide. The jury, on the other hand,
instinctively feels that the seduced girl is much less guilty
than the seducer, who, however, is not touched by the law, and
that she deserves every indulgence.
[25] The magistracy is, in point of fact, the only administration
whose acts are under no control. In spite of all its
revolutions, democratic France does not possess that right of
habeas corpus of which England is so proud. We have banished all
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