| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: next to the cock; then his eye
fell upon Pigling Bland, squeezed
up in a corner. He made a singular
remark--"Hallo, here's another!"
--seized Pigling by the scruff of the
neck, and dropped him into the
hamper. Then he dropped in five
more dirty, kicking, cackling hens
upon the top of Pigling Bland.
The hamper containing six fowls
and a young pig was no light
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: good than of the evil. Everything that is good is fair, and the fair is
not without proportion, and the animal which is to be fair must have due
proportion. Now we perceive lesser symmetries or proportions and reason
about them, but of the highest and greatest we take no heed; for there is
no proportion or disproportion more productive of health and disease, and
virtue and vice, than that between soul and body. This however we do not
perceive, nor do we reflect that when a weak or small frame is the vehicle
of a great and mighty soul, or conversely, when a little soul is encased in
a large body, then the whole animal is not fair, for it lacks the most
important of all symmetries; but the due proportion of mind and body is the
fairest and loveliest of all sights to him who has the seeing eye. Just as
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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 Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: no longer, and still breathing out vengeance against her old adversary she
laboured toward the cart. Shaking hands and affectionately kissing Em, she
was with some difficulty drawn up. Then slowly the cart rolled away, the
good Boer-woman putting her head out between the sails to smile and nod.
Em stood watching it for a time, then as the sun dazzled her eyes she
turned away. There was no use in going to sit with Gregory! he liked best
sitting there alone, staring across the the green karoo; and till the maid
had done churning there was nothing to do; so Em walked away to the wagon-
house, and climbed on to the end of Waldo's table, and sat there, swinging
one little foot slowly to and fro, while the wooden curls from the plane
heaped themselves up against her black print dress.
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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 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: I. Say they so? Oh, believe them not. Or if it indeed be so,
that this other Space is really Thoughtland, then take me to
that blessed Region where I in Thought shall see the insides
of all solid things. There, before my ravished eye, a Cube,
moving in some altogether new direction, but strictly according
to Analogy, so as to make every particle of his interior pass through
a new kind of Space, with a wake of its own -- shall create
a still more perfect perfection than himself, with sixteen terminal
Extra-solid angles, and Eight solid Cubes for his Perimeter.
And once there, shall we stay our upward course? In that blessed
region of Four Dimensions, shall we linger on the threshold
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
