| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: farming the sea, exploited a hundred thousand square miles or so of
the land that, on the maps of geographers, usually occupies the
white spaces. So the P. C. Company sent young Neil Bonner north,
where the white spaces are, to do its work and to learn to be good
like his father. "Five years of simplicity, close to the soil and
far from temptation, will make a man of him," said old Neil Bonner,
and forthwith crawled back among his roses. Young Neil set his
jaw, pitched his chin at the proper angle, and went to work. As an
underling he did his work well and gained the commendation of his
superiors. Not that he delighted in the work, but that it was the
one thing that prevented him from going mad.
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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 Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: without saying good-night, or saying it only in a half-muffled way.
It was so late that there was no time for normal conversation
between their arrival at the hotel and their retirement to bed.
But Hirst wandered into Hewet's room with a collar in his hand.
"Well, Hewet," he remarked, on the crest of a gigantic yawn,
"that was a great success, I consider." He yawned. "But take care
you're not landed with that young woman. . . . I don't really
like young women. . . ."
Hewet was too much drugged by hours in the open air to make any reply.
In fact every one of the party was sound asleep within ten minutes
or so of each other, with the exception of Susan Warrington.
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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 Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: writing home within recent months. She steadily refused to
acknowledge her true age. When the evidence was complete,
showing that she could not be held as a runaway girl, but must be
treated under the law as a woman, she went forth to begin, as we
heard from many other sources, her old misrepresentations of
herself, which speedily got her into further trouble.
We were not astonished, even after we had accumulated almost the
entire knowledge of the career which we have outlined above, and
Inez knew that we had done so, to be visited by two fine
philanthropic women who wanted to consult with us about an
unfortunate girl who had won their sympathy, and who had been
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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 Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: yields commodities as the result of labor. The necessity
of SOME labor for the satisfaction of our wants
is not imposed by political systems or by the exploitation
of the working classes; it is due to physical
laws, which the reformer, like everyone else, must
admit and study. Before any optimistic economic
project can be accepted as feasible, we must examine
whether the physical conditions of production impose
an unalterable veto, or whether they are capable of
being sufficiently modified by science and organization.
Two connected doctrines must be considered
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