| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: jewels sparkling like all the stars in heaven had fell down.
So him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded
every camel till he couldn't carry no more; then they
said good-bye, and each of them started off with his
fifty. But pretty soon the camel-driver come a-running
and overtook the dervish and says:
"You ain't in society, you know, and you don't
really need all you've got. Won't you be good, and
let me have ten of your camels?"
"Well," the dervish says, "I don't know but what
you say is reasonable enough."
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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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: hideous just because it WAS human, as human as to have
met alone, in the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy,
some adventurer, some criminal. It was the dead silence of our
long gaze at such close quarters that gave the whole horror,
huge as it was, its only note of the unnatural. If I had met
a murderer in such a place and at such an hour, we still at
least would have spoken. Something would have passed, in life,
between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved.
The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little
more to make me doubt if even _I_ were in life. I can't
express what followed it save by saying that the silence itself--
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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 The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: unable to learn. And this must have been still more the case when
the races were more strongly separated in blood and habits. So the
Teutonic chief, with his gesitha, comites, or select band of
knights, who had received from him, as Tacitus has it, the war-horse
and the lance, established himself as the natural ruler--and
oppressor--of the non-riding populations; first over the aborigines
of Germany proper, tribes who seem to have been enslaved, and their
names lost, before the time of Tacitus; and then over the non-riding
Romans and Gauls to the South and West, and the Wendish and
Sclavonic tribes to the East. Very few in numbers, but mighty in
their unequalled capacity of body and mind, and in their terrible
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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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: to any part of the system, excepting that which is at the time
brought into energetic action. Therefore many of the muscles
tend to become relaxed, and the jaw drops from its own weight.
This will account for the dropping of the jaw and open mouth of a man
stupefied with amazement, and perhaps when less strongly affected.
I have noticed this appearance, as I find recorded in my notes,
in very young children when they were only moderately surprised.
[7] `De la Physionomie,' 1865, p. 234.
[8] See, on this subject, Gratiolet, ibid. p. 254.
There is still another and highly effective cause, leading to the mouth
being opened, when we are astonished, and more especially when we
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
