| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that I was
really too honest a man to be a politician and live, I did not go where I
could do no good to you or to myself; but where I could do the greatest
good privately to every one of you, thither I went, and sought to persuade
every man among you that he must look to himself, and seek virtue and
wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the state
before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this should be the
order which he observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such an
one? Doubtless some good thing, O men of Athens, if he has his reward; and
the good should be of a kind suitable to him. What would be a reward
suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, and who desires leisure that
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed
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
United States Declaration of Independence |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: therefore never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any
other subject? We are daily complaining of the great decline of
wit among as, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only
topic we have left? Who would ever have suspected Asgil for a wit,
or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of
Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials?
What other subject through all art or nature could have produced
Tindal for a profound author, or furnished him with readers? It is
the wise choice of the subject that alone adorns and distinguishes
the writer. For had a hundred such pens as these been employed on
the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence
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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 Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: away off on the big Mississippi down there a-reaching
miles and miles around the points where the timber looks
smoky and dim it's so far off and still, and everything's
so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead
and gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too,
and done with it all.
Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever.
That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it,
you want--oh, you don't quite know what it is you DO want,
but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away;
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