| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: creative work? What can they know about it? If a man's work is
easy to understand, an explanation is unnecessary. . . .
GILBERT. And if his work is incomprehensible, an explanation is
wicked.
ERNEST. I did not say that.
GILBERT. Ah! but you should have. Nowadays, we have so few
mysteries left to us that we cannot afford to part with one of
them. The members of the Browning Society, like the theologians of
the Broad Church Party, or the authors of Mr. Walter Scott's Great
Writers Series, seem to me to spend their time in trying to explain
their divinity away. Where one had hoped that Browning was a
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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 United States Declaration of Independence: to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment
of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts
be submitted to a candid world.
 United States Declaration of Independence |