| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon: dear. I'm waiting and watching--but with clear eyes
and unafraid. I'll know mine when he comes, I shall
not be blinded by passion or the fear of drudgery.
Can't you see this bigger world of realities?"
The dimple flashed again in the smooth red cheek.
"It's not for me, Jane. I'm just a modest little
home body. I'll bide my time----"
"And eat your foolish heart out here between the
narrow walls of this cell you've built for yourself. I
should think you'd die living here alone."
The girl flushed.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: goodly garden and sent him with his ships to Ilius to fight the
Trojans, but never shall I welcome him back to the house of
Peleus. So long as he lives to look upon the light of the sun, he
is in heaviness, and though I go to him I cannot help him; King
Agamemnon has made him give up the maiden whom the sons of the
Achaeans had awarded him, and he wastes with sorrow for her sake.
Then the Trojans hemmed the Achaeans in at their ships' sterns
and would not let them come forth; the elders, therefore, of the
Argives besought Achilles and offered him great treasure, whereon
he refused to bring deliverance to them himself, but put his own
armour on Patroclus and sent him into the fight with much people
The Iliad |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: only comes through the mind itself, and which all men of talent strive
after between the ages of twenty and thirty. Agathe, seeing very
little of Joseph, and feeling no uneasiness about him, lived only for
Philippe, who gave her the alternations of fears excited and terrors
allayed, which seem the life, as it were, of sentiment, and to be as
necessary to maternity as to love. Desroches, who came once a week to
see the widow of his patron and friend, gave her hopes. The Duc de
Maufrigneuse had asked to have Philippe in his regiment; the minister
of war had ordered an inquiry; and as the name of Bridau did not
appear on any police list, nor an any record at the Palais de Justice,
Philippe would be reinstated in the army early in the coming year.
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: decomposing mass and acts within it. Nor, indeed, can this be done,
until we know the true physical process which underlies what we call
an electric current.
Faraday conceives of that current as 'an axis of power having
contrary forces exactly equal in amount in opposite directions';
but this definition, though much quoted and circulated, teaches us
nothing regarding the current. An 'axis' here can only mean a
direction; and what we want to be able to conceive of is, not the
axis along which the power acts, but the nature and mode of action
of the power itself. He objects to the vagueness of De la Rive;
but the fact is, that both he and De la Rive labour under the same
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