| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: the folly to lend to friends, who then deserted him and spoke of him
no more either for good or evil. He seemed to have regulated his
dissipations methodically. The secret of his character lay in his
father's tyranny, which had made him, as it were, a social mongrel.
So, one morning, he said to a friend named de Marsay, who afterwards
became celebrated:--
"My dear fellow, life has a meaning."
"You must be twenty-seven years of age before you can find it out,"
replied de Marsay, laughing.
"Well, I am twenty-seven; and precisely because I am twenty-seven I
mean to live the life of a country gentleman at Lanstrac. I'll
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: through the labour and care of the mother, requiring no expenditure of
tribal or family wealth on its training or education, its value as an adult
enormously outweighs, both to the state and the male, the trouble and
expense of rearing it, which falls almost entirely on the individual woman
who bears it. The man who has twenty children to become warriors and
labourers is by so much the richer and the more powerful than he who has
but one; while the state whose women are prolific and labour for and rear
their children stands so far insured against destruction. Incessant and
persistent child-bearing is thus truly the highest duty and the most
socially esteemed occupation of the primitive woman, equalling fully in
social importance the labour of the man as hunter and warrior.
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