| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: where he found an elderly man, very evidently ill, lying in bed.
"Who are you?" asked the sick man, raising his head from the pillow.
The woman had gone out and closed the door behind her.
"My name is Muller, police detective. Here are my credentials."
Fellner glanced hastily at the paper. "Why does the police send
to me?"
"It concerns your ward."
Fellner sat upright in bed now. He leaned over towards his visitor
as he said, pointing to a letter on the table beside his bed, "Asta's
overseer writes me from her estate that she left home on the 18th of
November to visit me. She should have reached here on the evening
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: people, that this was life?--startling, unexpected, unknown? For one
moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and
demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so
inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings
from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll
itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into
shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs Ramsay would return. "Mrs
Ramsay!" she said aloud, "Mrs Ramsay!" The tears ran down her face.
6
[Macalister's boy took one of the fish and cut a square out of its side
to bait his hook with. The mutilated body (it was alive still) was
To the Lighthouse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: unbridled passions they acquire the most impeccable honesty, and
get into the habit of fighting the battles which await genius
with the constant work by which they coerce their cheated
appetites.
Horace was an upright young fellow, incapable of tergiversation
on a matter of honor, going to the point without waste of words,
and as ready to pledge his cloak for a friend as to give him his
time and his night hours. Horace, in short, was one of those
friends who are never anxious as to what they may get in return
for what they give, feeling sure that they will in their turn get
more than they give. Most of his friends felt for him that
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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 The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: large we call it finance. There are high-handed proceedings criminal
between man and man that amount to nothing when spread out over any
number of men, much as a drop of prussic acid becomes harmless in a
pail of water. You take a man's life, you are guillotined. But if, for
any political conviction whatsoever, you take five hundred lives,
political crimes are respected. You take five thousand francs out of
my desk; to the hulks you go. But with a sop cleverly pushed into the
jaws of a thousand speculators, you can cram the stock of any bankrupt
republic or monarchy down their throats; even if the loan has been
floated, as Couture says, to pay the interest on that very same
national debt. Nobody can complain. These are the real principles of
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