| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: empty bay. Once again she cried--
"Susan! You will kill yourself there."
The stone had taken its last leap in the dark, and she heard nothing
now. A sudden thought seemed to strangle her, and she called no more.
She turned her back upon the black silence of the pit and went up the
lane towards Ploumar, stumbling along with sombre determination, as if
she had started on a desperate journey that would last, perhaps, to
the end of her life. A sullen and periodic clamour of waves rolling
over reefs followed her far inland between the high hedges sheltering
the gloomy solitude of the fields.
Susan had run out, swerving sharp to the left at the door, and on the
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: an' how good you was to Dorn's kids. They looked ashamed, Miss
Withersteen. An' they jest froze up--thet dark set look thet
makes them strange an' different to me. But I could tell the
difference between thet first natural twinge of conscience an'
the later look of some secret thing. An' the difference I caught
was thet they couldn't help themselves. They hadn't no say in the
matter. They looked as if their bein' unfaithful to you was bein'
faithful to a higher duty. An' there's the secret. Why it's as
plain as--as sight of my gun here."
"Plain!...My herds to wander in the sage--to be stolen! Jane
Withersteen a poor woman! Her head to be brought low and her
Riders of the Purple Sage |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: license, &c.
One of the most essential functions of statesmen consists, then,
in baptizing with popular or, at any rate, indifferent words
things the crowd cannot endure under their old names. The power
of words is so great that it suffices to designate in well-chosen
terms the most odious things to make them acceptable to crowds.
Taine justly observes that it was by invoking liberty and
fraternity--words very popular at the time-- that the Jacobins
were able "to install a despotism worthy of Dahomey, a tribunal
similar to that of the Inquisition, and to accomplish human
hecatombs akin to those of ancient Mexico." The art of those who
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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 Cratylus by Plato: mystery which has been confided to me; but when I ask for an explanation I
am thought obtrusive, and another derivation is proposed to me. Justice is
said to be o kaion, or the sun; and when I joyfully repeat this beautiful
notion, I am answered, 'What, is there no justice when the sun is down?'
And when I entreat my questioner to tell me his own opinion, he replies,
that justice is fire in the abstract, or heat in the abstract; which is not
very intelligible. Others laugh at such notions, and say with Anaxagoras,
that justice is the ordering mind. 'I think that some one must have told
you this.' And not the rest? Let me proceed then, in the hope of proving
to you my originality. Andreia is quasi anpeia quasi e ano roe, the stream
which flows upwards, and is opposed to injustice, which clearly hinders the
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