| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: moved aside to make room for the stranger. There was neither servility
nor scorn in her manner of doing this; it was a simple sign of the
goodwill by which the poor, who know by long experience the value of a
service and the warmth that fellowship brings, give expression to the
open-heartedness and the natural impulses of their souls; so artlessly
do they reveal their good qualities and their defects. The stranger
thanked her by a gesture full of gracious dignity, and took his place
between the young mother and the old soldier. Immediately behind him
sat a peasant and his son, a boy ten years of age. A beggar woman,
old, wrinkled, and clad in rags, was crouching, with her almost empty
wallet, on a great coil of rope that lay in the prow. One of the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: immediately suggested itself to his imagination that, as on the former
occasion, the fair damsel, the daughter of the lady of the castle,
overcome by love for him, was once more endeavouring to win his
affections; and with this idea, not to show himself discourteous, or
ungrateful, he turned Rocinante's head and approached the hole, and as
he perceived the two wenches he said:
"I pity you, beauteous lady, that you should have directed your
thoughts of love to a quarter from whence it is impossible that such a
return can be made to you as is due to your great merit and gentle
birth, for which you must not blame this unhappy knight-errant whom
love renders incapable of submission to any other than her whom, the
Don Quixote |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: make a theatrical demonstration of affectionate delight when its
mother returned after an absence: a typical example of the way in
which spurious family sentiment is stoked up. We are, after all,
sociable animals; and if we are let alone in the matter of our
affections, and well brought up otherwise, we shall not get on any the
worse with particular people because they happen to be our brothers
and sisters and cousins. The danger lies in assuming that we shall
get on any better.
The main point to grasp here is that families are not kept together at
present by family feeling but by human feeling. The family cultivates
sympathy and mutual help and consolation as any other form of kindly
|
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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: Alexander made use of at the siege of Troy.--He would tell my uncle Toby of
the Catapultae of the Syrians, which threw such monstrous stones so many
hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very foundation:-
-he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the Ballista which
Marcellinus makes so much rout about!--the terrible effects of the
Pyraboli, which cast fire;--the danger of the Terebra and Scorpio, which
cast javelins.--But what are these, would he say, to the destructive
machinery of corporal Trim?--Believe me, brother Toby, no bridge, or
bastion, or sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold
out against such artillery.
My uncle Toby would never attempt any defence against the force of this
|
