| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: Her companion cast a quiet glance upon her.
"He was the greatest man who ever lived," she said, "the man I like best."
"And what did he do?" asked Em, conscious that she had made a mistake, and
that her prophet was not the man.
"He was one man, only one," said her little companion slowly, "yet all the
people in the world feared him. He was not born great, he was common as we
are; yet he was master of the world at last. Once he was only a little
child, then he was a lieutenant, then he was a general, then he was an
emperor. When he said a thing to himself he never forgot it. He waited,
and waited and waited, and it came at last."
"He must have been very happy," said Em.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: and misjudges the possibilities of the latter.
All about the world to-day goes a certain freemasonry of thought.
It is an impalpable and hardly conscious union of intention. It
thinks not in terms of national but human experience; it falls
into directions and channels of thinking that lead inevitably to
the idea of a world-state under the rule of one righteousness.
In no part of the world is this modern type of mind so abundantly
developed, less impeded by antiquated and perverse political and
religious forms, and nearer the sources of political and
administrative power, than in America. It does not seem to
matter what thousand other things America may happen to be,
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