| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: hearty meals a day, and what are you going to do about
it?
And now, before I take up my tale, I want to anticipate
the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone to
scoff, and who would otherwise surely say that the
coherence of my dreams is due to overstudy and the
subconscious projection of my knowledge of evolution
into my dreams. In the first place, I have never been
a zealous student. I graduated last of my class. I
cared more for athletics, and--there is no reason I
should not confess it--more for billiards.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: He liked however the open shutters; he opened everywhere those Mrs.
Muldoon had closed, closing them as carefully afterwards, so that
she shouldn't notice: he liked - oh this he did like, and above
all in the upper rooms! - the sense of the hard silver of the
autumn stars through the window-panes, and scarcely less the flare
of the street-lamps below, the white electric lustre which it would
have taken curtains to keep out. This was human actual social;
this was of the world he had lived in, and he was more at his ease
certainly for the countenance, coldly general and impersonal, that
all the while and in spite of his detachment it seemed to give him.
He had support of course mostly in the rooms at the wide front and
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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 Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: Venus, convey this monster fro the earth,
That disobeyeth thus thy sacred hests!
Cupid, convey this monster to dark hell,
That disanulls thy mother's sugared laws!
Mars, with thy target all beset with flames,
With murthering blade bereave him of his life,
That hindreth Locrine in his sweetest joys!
And yet, for all his diligent aspect,
His wrathful eyes, piercing like Linces' eyes,
Well have I overmatched his subtilty.
Nigh Deurolitum, by the pleasant Lee,
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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 Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: people from the war, nor get leave for himself to be discharged of
the command, but the people, as it were, violently took him up and
carried him, and against his will put him in the office of general,
this was no longer now a time for his excessive caution and his
delays, nor was it for him, like a child, to look back from the
ship, often repeating and reconsidering over and over again how
that his advice had not been overruled by fair arguments, thus
blunting the courage of his fellow commanders and spoiling the
season of action. Whereas, he ought speedily to have closed with
the enemy and brought the matter to an issue, and put fortune
immediately to the test in battle. But, on the contrary, when
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