| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: though with great prudence, commenced early to
ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their
condition, and to imbue their minds with thoughts
of freedom. I bent myself to devising ways and
means for our escape, and meanwhile strove, on all
fitting occasions, to impress them with the gross
fraud and inhumanity of slavery. I went first to
Henry, next to John, then to the others. I found,
in them all, warm hearts and noble spirits. They
were ready to hear, and ready to act when a feasible
plan should be proposed. This was what I wanted.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: young woman had cautiously examined the old seigneur, she drew a long
breath and raised her forehead, adorned with a precious jewel, toward
a picture of the Virgin; that simple movement, that attitude, the
moistened glance, revealed her life with imprudent naivete; had she
been wicked, she would certainly have dissimulated. The personage who
thus alarmed the lovers was a little old man, hunchbacked, nearly
bald, savage in expression, and wearing a long and discolored white
beard cut in a fan-tail. The cross of Saint-Michel glittered on his
breast; his coarse, strong hands, covered with gray hairs, which had
been clasped, had now dropped slightly apart in the slumber to which
he had imprudently yielded. The right hand seemed about to fall upon
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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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew
from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his
possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding
presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a
flight of stairs.
His bedroom was the simplest room of all--except where the dresser was
garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush
with delight, and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and
shaded his eyes and began to laugh.
"It's the funniest thing, old sport," he said hilariously. "I can't--When
I try to----"
The Great Gatsby |
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 Charmides by Plato: like the Trojan war or the legend of Arthur, which we are unable to
penetrate. In the age of Cicero, and still more in that of Diogenes
Laertius and Appuleius, many other legends had gathered around the
personality of Plato,--more voyages, more journeys to visit tyrants and
Pythagorean philosophers. But if, as we agree with Karsten in supposing,
they are the forgery of some rhetorician or sophist, we cannot agree with
him in also supposing that they are of any historical value, the rather as
there is no early independent testimony by which they are supported or with
which they can be compared.
IV. There is another subject to which I must briefly call attention, lest
I should seem to have overlooked it. Dr. Henry Jackson, of Trinity
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