| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: the chemistry of common life, light, heat, electricity, etc. etc."
A little knowledge of the laws of light, for instance, would teach
many women that by shutting themselves up day after day, week
after week, in darkened rooms, they are as certainly committing a
waste of health, destroying their vital energy, and diseasing
their brains, as if they were taking so much poison the whole
time.
A little knowledge of the laws of heat would teach women not to
clothe themselves and their children after foolish and
insufficient fashions, which in this climate sow the seeds of a
dozen different diseases, and have to be atoned for by perpetual
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Where blood pays blood for nothing, and where life
Pays life to madness, till at last the ports
Of gilded helplessness be battered through
By the still crash of salvatory steel.
XIX
To you that sit with Sorrow like chained slaves,
And wonder if the night will ever come,
I would say this: The night will never come,
And sorrow is not always. But my words
Are not enough; your eyes are not enough;
The soul itself must insulate the Real,
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