| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: still more surprising to us mortals, not only do the sciences in general
spring up and decay, so that in respect of them we are never the same; but
each of them individually experiences a like change. For what is implied
in the word "recollection," but the departure of knowledge, which is ever
being forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and appears
to be the same although in reality new, according to that law of succession
by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely the same, but by
substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another new and similar
existence behind--unlike the divine, which is always the same and not
another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything,
partakes of immortality; but the immortal in another way. Marvel not then
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: Churton laughed, because he was not brought up to believe that men
on the Government House List steal--at least little things. But the
miraculous acceptance by Miss Hollis of that tailor, Pack, decided
him to take steps on suspicion. He vowed that he only wanted to
find out where his ruby-studded silver box had vanished to. You
cannot accuse a man on the Government House List of stealing. And
if you rifle his room you are a thief yourself. Churton, prompted
by The Man who Knew, decided on burglary. If he found nothing in
Pack's room . . . . but it is not nice to think of what would have
happened in that case.
Pack went to a dance at Benmore--Benmore WAS Benmore in those days,
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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 Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: is the great quality of impersonality.
If we take, through the earth's temperate zone, a belt of country
whose northern and southern edges are determined by certain limiting
isotherms, not more than half the width of the zone apart, we shall
find that we have included in a relatively small extent of surface
almost all the nations of note in the world, past or present.
Now if we examine this belt, and compare the different parts of it
with one another, we shall be struck by a remarkable fact.
The peoples inhabiting it grow steadily more personal as we go west.
So unmistakable is this gradation of spirit, that one is tempted to
ascribe it to cosmic rather than to human causes. It is as marked
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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 Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: it. If I had been you, mother, I might have done as you did; but
I should not have lived one life and believed in another. You
are a conventional woman at heart. That is why I am bidding you
goodbye now. I am right, am I not?
MRS WARREN [taken aback] Right to throw away all my money!
VIVIE. No: right to get rid of you? I should be a fool not to.
Isnt that so?
MRS WARREN [sulkily] Oh well, yes, if you come to that, I suppose
you are. But Lord help the world if everybody took to doing the
right thing! And now I'd better go than stay where I'm not
wanted. [She turns to the door].
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