| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: steal from poesy a single lie with which to embellish this narrative.
The following is a true history, on which you may safely spend the
treasures of your sensibility--if you have any.
In these days the French language has as many idioms and represents as
many idiosyncracies as there are varieties of men in the great family
of France. It is extremely curious and amusing to listen to the
different interpretations or versions of the same thing or the same
event by the various species which compose the genus Parisian,--
"Parisian" is here used merely to generalize our remark.
Therefore, if you should say to an individual of the species
Practical, "Do you know Madame Firmiani?" he would present that lady
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: care H. B. M. Vice Consul, Varna
"Czarina Catherine reported entering Galatz at one o'clock today."
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
28 October.--When the telegram came announcing the arrival in Galatz I
do not think it was such a shock to any of us as might have been expected.
True, we did not know whence, or how, or when, the bolt would come.
But I think we all expected that something strange would happen.
The day of arrival at Varna made us individually satisfied that things
would not be just as we had expected. We only waited to learn where
the change would occur. None the less, however, it was a surprise.
I suppose that nature works on such a hopeful basis that we believe
Dracula |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: "Shall I clamber across, or will you come to the plank above here?"
Perhaps she foresaw an opportunity; for somehow or other the eyes
of the brown girl rested in his own when he had said the words,
and there was a momentary flash of intelligence, a dumb announcement
of affinity IN POSSE between herself and him, which, so far
as Jude Fawley was concerned, had no sort of premeditation in it.
She saw that he had singled her out from the three, as a woman is singled
out in such cases, for no reasoned purpose of further acquaintance,
but in commonplace obedience to conjunctive orders from headquarters,
unconsciously received by unfortunate men when the last intention of
their lives is to be occupied with the feminine.
Jude the Obscure |
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 Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: sufferings and difficulties may be overcome by the immediate
amelioration of his economic environment. In this manner,
psychologists tell us, neuroses and inner compulsions are fostered.
No true solution is possible, to continue this analogy, until the
worker is awakened to the realization that the roots of his malady lie
deep in his own nature, his own organism, his own habits. To blame
everything upon the capitalist and the environment produced by
capitalism is to focus attention upon merely one of the elements of
the problem. The Marxian too often forgets that before there was a
capitalist there was exercised the unlimited reproductive activity of
mankind, which produced the first overcrowding, the first want. This
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