| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: become my general conception in politics, the conception of the
constructive imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful
people, clever people, enterprising people, influential people,
amidst whom power is diffused to-day, to produce that self-
conscious, highly selective, open-minded, devoted aristocratic
culture, which seems to me to be the necessary next phase in the
development of human affairs. I see human progress, not as the
spontaneous product of crowds of raw minds swayed by elementary
needs, but as a natural but elaborate result of intricate human
interdependencies, of human energy and curiosity liberated and
acting at leisure, of human passions and motives, modified and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: Dewar was a butcher by trade, a young man, some eighteen
months married, and father of a baby girl. Robb, on seeing smoke
coming from Dewar's house, woke his son, who was a member of the
fire brigade. The latter got up, crossed the street, and going
round to the back door, which he found wide open, entered the
house. As he went along the passage that separated the two front
rooms, a bedroom and sitting-room, he called to the inmates to
get up. He received no answer, but as he neared the bedroom he
heard a "gurgling" sound. Crawling on his hands and knees he
reached the bedroom door, and two feet inside it his right hand
touched something. It was the body of a woman; she was still
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Ah! shall I ever in aftertime behold
My native bounds- see many a harvest hence
With ravished eyes the lowly turf-roofed cot
Where I was king? These fallows, trimmed so fair,
Some brutal soldier will possess these fields
An alien master. Ah! to what a pass
Has civil discord brought our hapless folk!
For such as these, then, were our furrows sown!
Now, Meliboeus, graft your pears, now set
Your vines in order! Go, once happy flock,
My she-goats, go. Never again shall I,
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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 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: the Russian prince, who you said had 30,000 livres, and we
only found 22,000."
"You must have searched badly."
"Luigi Vampa himself searched."
"Indeed? But you must let me make my observations, or the
Frenchman will transact his business without my knowing the
sum." Peppino nodded, and taking a rosary from his pocket
began to mutter a few prayers while the clerk disappeared
through the same door by which Danglars and the attendant
had gone out. At the expiration of ten minutes the clerk
returned with a beaming countenance. "Well?" asked Peppino
The Count of Monte Cristo |
