| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: humanity at large is capable of that high education and those
creative freedoms our hope demands, much more must its better and
more vigorous types be so capable. And if those who have power and
leisure now, and freedom to respond to imaginative appeals, cannot
be won to the idea of collective self-development, then the whole of
humanity cannot be won to that. From that one passes to what has
become my general conception in politics, the conception of the
constructive imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful
people, clever people, enterprising people, influential people,
amidst whom power is diffused to-day, to produce that self-
conscious, highly selective, open-minded, devoted aristocratic
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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 Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: misanthropy.
David Ritchie, besides the utter obscurity of his life while in
existence, had been dead for many years, when it occurred to the
author that such a character might be made a powerful agent in
fictitious narrative. He, accordingly, sketched that of Elshie
of the Mucklestane-Moor. The story was intended to be longer,
and the catastrophe more artificially brought out; but a friendly
critic, to whose opinion I subjected the work in its progress,
was of opinion, that the idea of the Solitary was of a kind too
revolting, and more likely to disgust than to interest the
reader. As I had good right to consider my adviser as an
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: Then, with all the strength of will, all the energy which every woman
can display when she loves, Madame de Sommervieux tried to alter her
character, her manners, and her habits; but by dint of devouring books
and learning undauntedly, she only succeeded in becoming less
ignorant. Lightness of wit and the graces of conversation are a gift
of nature, or the fruit of education begun in the cradle. She could
appreciate music and enjoy it, but she could not sing with taste. She
understood literature and the beauties of poetry, but it was too late
to cultivate her refractory memory. She listened with pleasure to
social conversation, but she could contribute nothing brilliant. Her
religious notions and home-grown prejudices were antagonistic to the
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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 Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: there, where the rocks made room. The air was very sweet; one
could not help wishing to be a citizen of such a complete and tiny
continent and home of fisherfolk.
The house was broad and clean, with a roof that looked heavy
on its low walls. It was one of the houses that seem firm-rooted
in the ground, as if they were two-thirds below the surface, like
icebergs. The front door stood hospitably open in expectation of
company, and an orderly vine grew at each side; but our path led to
the kitchen door at the house-end, and there grew a mass of gay
flowers and greenery, as if they had been swept together by some
diligent garden broom into a tangled heap: there were portulacas
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