| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: subsidence. I may add, that the only ancient tertiary formation on the
west coast of South America, which has been bulky enough to resist such
degradation as it has as yet suffered, but which will hardly last to a
distant geological age, was certainly deposited during a downward
oscillation of level, and thus gained considerable thickness.
All geological facts tell us plainly that each area has undergone numerous
slow oscillations of level, and apparently these oscillations have affected
wide spaces. Consequently formations rich in fossils and sufficiently
thick and extensive to resist subsequent degradation, may have been formed
over wide spaces during periods of subsidence, but only where the supply of
sediment was sufficient to keep the sea shallow and to embed and preserve
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: believed to be capable of outliving the memory of the oldest human
inhabitant. But the fact that new ones are born conclusively proves
that they are not immortal. Do away with death and you do away with
the need for birth: in fact if you went on breeding, you would
finally have to kill old people to make room for young ones.
Now death is not necessarily a failure of energy on the part of the
Life Force. People with no imagination try to make things which will
last for ever, and even want to live for ever themselves. But the
intelligently imaginative man knows very well that it is waste of
labor to make a machine that will last ten years, because it will
probably be superseded in half that time by an improved machine
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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 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: and well-knit frame would not at once release the imprisoned spirit.
By stealth, there had been there, in the darkness of the night,
poor desolated creatures, who stole from their scanty hours'
rest, that they might repay to him some of those ministrations of
love in which he had always been so abundant. Truly, those poor
disciples had little to give,--only the cup of cold water; but it
was given with full hearts.
Tears had fallen on that honest, insensible face,--tears
of late repentance in the poor, ignorant heathen, whom his dying
love and patience had awakened to repentance, and bitter prayers,
breathed over him to a late-found Saviour, of whom they scarce knew
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: "when in the world, please, am I going back to school?"
Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough,
particularly as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which,
at all interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess,
he threw off intonations as if he were tossing roses.
There was something in them that always made one "catch," and
I caught, at any rate, now so effectually that I stopped as short
as if one of the trees of the park had fallen across the road.
There was something new, on the spot, between us, and he was
perfectly aware that I recognized it, though, to enable me to do so,
he had no need to look a whit less candid and charming than usual.
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