| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: a kill when they had been hunting in pairs.
Almost immediately there was a crashing of the underbrush
close at hand, and the long, lithe body of his strange
companion broke into view.
At sight of the body of Bara and the smell of blood the panther
gave forth a shrill scream, and a moment later two beasts were
feeding side by side upon the tender meat of the deer.
For several days this strangely assorted pair roamed
the jungle together.
When one made a kill he called the other,
and thus they fed well and often.
The Beasts of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: world. It had its representatives in the Chambers, and commanded
considerable influence in the press. Its Parisian organ, the
"National," passed, in its way, for as respectable a paper as the
"Journal des Debats." This position in the constitutional monarchy
corresponded to its character. The party was not a fraction of the
bourgeoisie, held together by great and common interests, and marked by
special business requirements. It was a coterie of bourgeois with
republican ideas-writers, lawyers, officers and civil employees, whose
influence rested upon the personal antipathies of the country for Louis
Philippe, upon reminiscences of the old Republic, upon the republican
faith of a number of enthusiasts, and, above all, upon the spirit of
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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 King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it was a marvel to everyone
who beheld it and was commonly called the Treasure Valley.
The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers,
called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the two elder
brothers, were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and small,
dull eyes which were always half shut, so that you couldn't see into
THEM and always fancied they saw very far into YOU. They lived by
farming the Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were. They
killed everything that did not pay for its eating. They shot the
blackbirds because they pecked the fruit, and killed the hedgehogs
lest they should suck the cows; they poisoned the crickets for
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: other bank, which to them was France, than to rush from the horrors of
Siberia. Despair proved an aegis to some bold hearts. One officer
sprang from ice-cake to ice-cake, and reached the opposite shore. A
soldier clambered miraculously over mounds of dead bodies and heaps of
ice. The multitude finally comprehended that the Russians would not
put to death a body of twenty thousand men, without arms, torpid,
stupid, unable to defend themselves; and each man awaited his fate
with horrible resignation. Then the major and the grenadier, the
general and his wife, remained almost alone on the river bank, a few
steps from the spot where the bridge had been. They stood there, with
dry eyes, silent, surrounded by heaps of dead. A few sound soldiers, a
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