| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: runs along everywhere at the foot of the chalk hills.
I see the hills now. Are they chalk?
Yes, chalk they are: so we may begin to feel near home now. See
how they range away to the south toward Devizes, and Westbury, and
Warminster, a goodly land and large. At their feet, everywhere,
run the rich pastures on which the Wiltshire cheese is made; and
here and there, as at Westbury, there is good iron-ore in the
greensand, which is being smelted now, as it used to be in the
Weald of Surrey and Kent ages since. I must tell you about that
some other time.
But are there Coprolites here?
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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 Human Drift by Jack London: mouth of the river; but there was no anchorage and we drifted
backward, faster and faster, and dropped anchor outside as the
last breath of wind left us. The night came on, beautiful and
warm and starry. My one companion cooked supper, while on deck I
put everything in shape Bristol fashion. When we turned in at
nine o'clock the weather-promise was excellent. (If I had carried
a barometer I'd have known better.) By two in the morning our
shrouds were thrumming in a piping breeze, and I got up and gave
her more scope on her hawser. Inside another hour there was no
doubt that we were in for a southeaster.
It is not nice to leave a warm bed and get out of a bad anchorage
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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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: This was a strange testimony of the growing vice of the age,
and such a one, that as bad as I had been myself, it shocked
my very senses. I began to nauseate the place I was in and,
about all, the wicked practice; and yet I must say that I never
saw, or do I believe there was to be seen, the least indecency
in the house the whole time I was there.
Not a man was ever seen to come upstairs, except to visit the
lying-in ladies within their month, nor then without the old lady
with them, who made it a piece of honour of her management
that no man should touch a woman, no, not his own wife, within
the month; nor would she permit any man to lie in the house
Moll Flanders |
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 Apology by Plato: shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in an affidavit:
'Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things
under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better
cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others.' Such is the
nature of the accusation: it is just what you have yourselves seen in the
comedy of Aristophanes (Aristoph., Clouds.), who has introduced a man whom
he calls Socrates, going about and saying that he walks in air, and talking
a deal of nonsense concerning matters of which I do not pretend to know
either much or little--not that I mean to speak disparagingly of any one
who is a student of natural philosophy. I should be very sorry if Meletus
could bring so grave a charge against me. But the simple truth is, O
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