Today's Stichomancy for B. F. Skinner

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy:

'You may do better next time,' he said placidly: 'I think you will. But I would advise you to confine yourself to domestic scenes.'

'Thank you. But never again!'

'Well, you may be right. That a young woman has taken to writing is not by any means the best thing to hear about her.'

'What is the best?'

'I prefer not to say.'

'Do you know? Then, do tell me, please.'

'Well'--(Knight was evidently changing his meaning)--'I suppose to hear that she has married.'

A Pair of Blue Eyes

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott:

from the base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage; which rates our life far, far beneath the pitch of our honour; raises us victorious over pain, toil, and suffering, and teaches us to fear no, evil but disgrace. Thou art no Christian, Rebecca; and to thee are unknown those high feelings which swell the bosom of a noble maiden when her lover hath done some deed of emprize which sanctions his flame. Chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the

Ivanhoe

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde:

the pillars of my house. At night time they come with the flute players and the players of the harp. They woo me with apples and on the pavement of my courtyard they write my name in wine.

From the uttermost parts of the world my lovers come to me. The kings of the earth come to me and bring me presents.

When the Emperor of Byzantium heard of me he left his porphyry chamber and set sail in his galleys. His slaves bare no torches that none might know of his coming. When the King of Cyprus heard of me he sent me ambassadors. The two Kings of Libya who are brothers brought me gifts of amber.

I took the minion of Caesar from Caesar and made him my playfellow.

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 Philebus by Plato:

ways. But of that religion which combines the will of God with our highest ideas of truth and right there can never be too much. This impossibility of excess is the note of divine moderation.

So then, having briefly passed in review the various principles of moral philosophy, we may now arrange our goods in order, though, like the reader of the Philebus, we have a difficulty in distinguishing the different aspects of them from one another, or defining the point at which the human passes into the divine.

First, the eternal will of God in this world and in another,--justice, holiness, wisdom, love, without succession of acts (ouch e genesis prosestin), which is known to us in part only, and reverenced by us as