| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.
It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision
in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all
the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will
endure forever--it being impossible to destroy it except by some action
not provided for in the instrument itself.
Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association
of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract,
be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it?
One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak;
but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: extraordinary nature of the work he was producing. He was a
great reader, and he knew what other books were like. It
must, at least, have crossed his mind that some one might
ultimately decipher the manuscript, and he himself, with all
his pains and pleasures, be resuscitated in some later day;
and the thought, although discouraged, must have warmed his
heart. He was not such an ass, besides, but he must have
been conscious of the deadly explosives, the gun-cotton and
the giant powder, he was hoarding in his drawer. Let some
contemporary light upon the journal, and Pepys was plunged
for ever in social and political disgrace. We can trace the
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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 The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: made!
Oddly enough, it was made at last by accident, when Mr. Cavor least
expected it. He had fused together a number of metals and certain other
things - I wish I knew the particulars now ! - and he intended to leave
the mixture a week and then allow it to cool slowly. Unless he had
miscalculated, the last stage in the combination would occur when the
stuff sank to a temperature of 60 Fahr. But it chanced that, unknown to
Cavor, dissension had arisen about the furnace tending. Gibbs, who had
previously seen to this, had suddenly attempted to shift it to the man who
had been a gardener, on the score that coal was soil, being dug, and
therefore could not possibly fall within the province of a joiner; the man
The First Men In The Moon |
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 Confessio Amantis by John Gower: Hath upon Robberie sett;
The bridd is flowe and he was let,
The faire Maide him hath ascaped,
Wherof for evere he was bejaped
And scorned of that he hath lore.
Mi Sone, be thou war therfore
That thou no maidenhode stele,
Wherof men sen deseses fele 6220
Aldai befalle in sondri wise;
So as I schal thee yit devise
An other tale therupon,
Confessio Amantis |
