| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: adapting itself in its institutions to the new conditions. It was
for the latter alternative that the assembly existed.
Sooner or later this choice would have confronted mankind. The
sudden development of atomic science did but precipitate and
render rapid and dramatic a clash between the new and the
customary that had been gathering since ever the first flint was
chipped or the first fire built together. From the day when man
contrived himself a tool and suffered another male to draw near
him, he ceased to be altogether a thing of instinct and
untroubled convictions. From that day forth a widening breach can
be traced between his egotistical passions and the social need.
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "Yes!" Don Juan could not have been more startled.
"What is to be done?" he thought.
He nerved himself to try to close the white eyelid. In vain.
"Kill it? That would perhaps be parricide," he debated with
himself.
"Yes," the eye said, with a strange sardonic quiver of the lid.
"Aha!" said Don Juan to himself, "here is witchcraft at work!"
And he went closer to crush the thing. A great tear trickled over
the hollow cheeks, and fell on Don Juan's hand.
"It is scalding!" he cried. He sat down. The struggle exhausted
him; it was as if, like Jacob of old, he was wrestling with an
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