| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: part of that growing tenderness which came from the sorrow at work
within him.
For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard
and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature,
had not outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a
temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us?
God forbid. It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our
wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--
if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-
confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the
same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble
 Adam Bede |
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 Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: "Did you ever see such a set of cranks? The woman asked me if I
thought her husband looked like a gentleman!"
"It was hard to keep the ball rolling at dinner, certainly,"
said Richard. "Why is it that the women, in that class,
are so much queerer than the men?"
"They're not half bad-looking, really--only--they're so odd!"
They both laughed, thinking of the same things, so that there
was no need to compare their impressions.
"I see I shall have quite a lot to say to Vinrace," said Richard.
"He knows Sutton and all that set. He can tell me a good deal about
the conditions of ship-building in the North."
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