| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his
shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at
his post, the fine figure of a soldier? Mr Ramsay squared his shoulders
and stood very upright by the urn.
Who shall blame him, if, so standing for a moment he dwells upon fame,
upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful followers over his
bones? Finally, who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition, if,
having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to the
last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he now
perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on the
whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and some one to
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: this subservience of conduct to the gaining of small sums thoroughly
hateful to him. Hitherto in his own life his wants had been supplied
without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse was always to be
liberal with half-crowns as matters of no importance to a gentleman;
it had never occurred to him to devise a plan for getting half-crowns.
He had always known in a general way that he was not rich, but he
had never felt poor, and he had no power of imagining the part
which the want of money plays in determining the actions of men.
Money had never been a motive to him. Hence he was not ready
to frame excuses for this deliberate pursuit of small gains.
It was altogether repulsive to him, and he never entered into any
Middlemarch |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: greatest care, and then had to go. There was a
good deal of sickness that winter. 'Oh, I hope he
won't talk!' she exclaimed softly just as I was go-
ing away.
"I don't know how it is I did not see--but I
didn't. And yet, turning in my trap, I saw her
lingering before the door, very still, and as if med-
itating a flight up the miry road.
"Towards the night his fever increased.
"He tossed, moaned, and now and then muttered
a complaint. And she sat with the table between
Amy Foster |
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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: (too long to quote here, but which is well worth reading) may be
found in Gosse's "Aquarium." (32)
A prawn or two, and a few minute star-fish, will make your aquarium
complete; though you may add to it endlessly, as one glance at the
salt-water tanks of the Zoological Gardens, and the strange and
beautiful forms which they contain, will prove to you sufficiently.
You have two more enemies to guard against, dust, and heat. If the
surface of the water becomes clogged with dust, the communication
between it and the life-giving oxygen of the air is cut off; and
then your animals are liable to die, for the very same reason that
fish die in a pond which is long frozen over, unless a hole be
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