| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: make any difference in the fears of individuals. For any man, who is not
devoid of sense, must fear, if he has no knowledge and can give no account
of the soul's immortality. This, or something like this, I suspect to be
your notion, Cebes; and I designedly recur to it in order that nothing may
escape us, and that you may, if you wish, add or subtract anything.
But, said Cebes, as far as I see at present, I have nothing to add or
subtract: I mean what you say that I mean.
Socrates paused awhile, and seemed to be absorbed in reflection. At length
he said: You are raising a tremendous question, Cebes, involving the whole
nature of generation and corruption, about which, if you like, I will give
you my own experience; and if anything which I say is likely to avail
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: before the brightness of your portrait, when I open the spring that
keeps it locked up from every eye and lose myself in endless musings
or link my happiness to verse. From the heights of heaven I look down
upon the course of a life such as my hopes dare to picture it! Have
you never, in the silence of the night, or through the roar of the
town, heard the whisper of a voice in your sweet, dainty ear? Does no
one of the thousand prayers that I speed to you reach home?
By dint of silent contemplation of your pictured face, I have
succeeded in deciphering the expression of every feature and tracing
its connection with some grace of the spirit, and then I pen a sonnet
to you in Spanish on the harmony of the twofold beauty in which nature
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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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon: The first is the destruction of those religious, political, and
social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilisation are
rooted. The second is the creation of entirely new conditions of
existence and thought as the result of modern scientific and
industrial discoveries.
The ideas of the past, although half destroyed, being still very
powerful, and the ideas which are to replace them being still in
process of formation, the modern age represents a period of
transition and anarchy.
It is not easy to say as yet what will one day be evolved from
this necessarily somewhat chaotic period. What will be 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 Bucolics by Virgil: We are taking him- ill luck go with the same!-'
These kids you see.
LYCIDAS
But surely I had heard
That where the hills first draw from off the plain,
And the high ridge with gentle slope descends,
Down to the brook-side and the broken crests
Of yonder veteran beeches, all the land
Was by the songs of your Menalcas saved.
MOERIS
Heard it you had, and so the rumour ran,
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