| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: either the general, or the pilot, or any one else, in his saving power, for
he sometimes saves whole cities. Is there any comparison between him and
the pleader? And if he were to talk, Callicles, in your grandiose style,
he would bury you under a mountain of words, declaring and insisting that
we ought all of us to be engine-makers, and that no other profession is
worth thinking about; he would have plenty to say. Nevertheless you
despise him and his art, and sneeringly call him an engine-maker, and you
will not allow your daughters to marry his son, or marry your son to his
daughters. And yet, on your principle, what justice or reason is there in
your refusal? What right have you to despise the engine-maker, and the
others whom I was just now mentioning? I know that you will say, 'I am
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: that something akin to the migratory instinct in birds and
quadrupeds--which, in some instances, is known to have affected
the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and mysterious
movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the
broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail
raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their
dead--that something like the furor which affects the domestic
cattle in the spring, and which is referred to a worm in their
tails,--affects both nations and individuals, either perennially
or from time to time. Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our
town, but it to some extent unsettles the value of real estate
Walking |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: Fanny. 'I wake um, my devil. All right now. He go catch
the man that catch my pig.' About an hour afterwards,
Lafaele came for further particulars. 'O, all right,' my
wife says. 'By and by, that man he sleep, devil go sleep
same place. By and by, that man plenty sick. I no care.
What for he take my pig?' Lafaele cares plenty; I don't
think he is the man, though he may be; but he knows him, and
most likely will eat some of that pig to-night. He will not
eat with relish.
SATURDAY 27TH.
It cleared up suddenly after dinner, and my wife and 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 Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: with wide eyes was staring ahead of him, murmuring, "It's the pastor
this time; I saw him - just as I did the others."
"Shepherd, the inn-keeper wants to see you, there's something the
matter with his cow." cried a young man, coming from the other
direction and pushing in at the door past Margit, who stood there
staring up the road.
Janci was so deep in his own thoughts that he apparently did not
hear the boy's words. At all events he did not answer them, but
himself asked an unexpected question - a question that was not
addressed to the others in the room, but to something out and
beyond them. It was a strange question and it came from the lips
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