| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: LXXIII
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: system, and threatens to dominate the future economics
and the politics of the great Republic.
The financial economy of American capitalism exhibits
in more dramatic shape a tendency common to the
finance of all developed industrial nations. The large,
easy flow of capital from Great Britain, Germany, Austria,
France, etc., into South African or Australian mines,
into Egyptian bonds, or the precarious securities of South
American republics, attests the same general pressure
which increases with every development of financial machinery
and the more profitable control of that machinery
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: this notwithstanding, they are seen as the party of Order to insult the
republic and express their antipathy for it, it happened not out of
royalist traditions only: Instinct taught them that while, indeed, the
republic completes their authority, it at the same time undermined their
social foundation, in that, without intermediary, without the mask of
the crown, without being able to turn aside the national interest by
means of its subordinate struggles among its own conflicting elements
and with the crown, the republic is compelled to stand up sharp against
the subjugated classes, and wrestle with them. It was a sense of
weakness that caused them to recoil before the unqualified demands of
their own class rule, and to retreat to the less complete, less
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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 The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: motives connected with the health of his wife, which had long kept
her in retirement. A year - more than a year - had elapsed since
the incident at Bridges, but I had had no further sight of him. I
think I was at bottom rather ashamed - I hated to remind him that,
though I had irremediably missed his point, a reputation for
acuteness was rapidly overtaking me. This scruple led me a dance;
kept me out of Lady Jane's house, made me even decline, when in
spite of my bad manners she was a second time so good as to make me
a sign, an invitation to her beautiful seat. I once became aware
of her under Vereker's escort at a concert, and was sure I was seen
by them, but I slipped out without being caught. I felt, as on
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