| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: practice they lose all force, as will be admitted if the
invincible strength be remembered of ideas transformed into
dogmas. The dogma of the sovereignty of crowds is as little
defensible, from the philosophical point of view, as the
religious dogmas of the Middle Ages, but it enjoys at present the
same absolute power they formerly enjoyed. It is as unattackable
in consequence as in the past were our religious ideas. Imagine
a modern freethinker miraculously transported into the midst of
the Middle Ages. Do you suppose that, after having ascertained
the sovereign power of the religious ideas that were then in
force, he would have been tempted to attack them? Having fallen
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: FIRST SOLDIER.
If you could find out a country where but women were that had
received so much shame, you might begin an impudent nation. Fare
ye well, sir; I am for France too: we shall speak of you there.
[Exit.]
PAROLLES.
Yet am I thankful: if my heart were great,
'Twould burst at this. Captain I'll be no more;
But I will eat, and drink, and sleep as soft
As captain shall: simply the thing I am
Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart,
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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 Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: and for ever. Already her suffering as an individual was left behind
her. Of this process, which was to her so full of effort, which
comprised infinitely swift and full passages of thought, leading from
one crest to another, as she shaped her conception of life in this
world, only two articulate words escaped her, muttered beneath her
breath--"Not happiness--not happiness."
She sat down on a seat opposite the statue of one of London's heroes
upon the Embankment, and spoke the words aloud. To her they
represented the rare flower or splinter of rock brought down by a
climber in proof that he has stood for a moment, at least, upon the
highest peak of the mountain. She had been up there and seen the world
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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 Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: thought of half so much importance as their way of coming in at a
door; and when the whole system of society, as respects the mode of
establishing them in life, is one rotten plague of cowardice and
imposture--cowardice, in not daring to let them live, or love,
except as their neighbours choose; and imposture, in bringing, for
the purposes of our own pride, the full glow of the world's worst
vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when the whole
happiness of her future existence depends upon her remaining
undazzled?
And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but noble teachers.
You consider somewhat before you send your boy to school, what kind
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