| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: belong to themselves and not to them.
What do you mean? said Socrates.
I may illustrate my meaning in this way, said Parmenides:--A master has a
slave; now there is nothing absolute in the relation between them, which is
simply a relation of one man to another. But there is also an idea of
mastership in the abstract, which is relative to the idea of slavery in the
abstract. These natures have nothing to do with us, nor we with them; they
are concerned with themselves only, and we with ourselves. Do you see my
meaning?
Yes, said Socrates, I quite see your meaning.
And will not knowledge--I mean absolute knowledge--answer to absolute
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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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: there were no assignable limits to the contagion of imitation. And
this it was which so profoundly agitated German society. In every
family in which there happened to be a bride, vague tremors could
not be allayed; and the absolute powerlessness which resulted from
the utter uncertainty as to the quarter in which this dreaded
phantom might next appear, justified and intensified those tremors.
Against such an apparition there was no conceivable safeguard.
From a city stricken with the plague, from a district so stricken,
flight is possible, and there are the resources of medical aid.
But from a moral plague like this, what escape was possible?
So passionate and profound became the terror, that I began to share
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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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: window-pane, you may see the passer-by shoot up into a
hunchbacked giant or dwindle into a potbellied dwarf.
To Ronalds, at least, the mine belonged; but the notice by
which he held it would ran out upon the 30th of June - or
rather, as I suppose, it had run out already, and the month
of grace would expire upon that day, after which any American
citizen might post a notice of his own, and make Silverado
his. This, with a sort of quiet slyness, Rufe told me at an
early period of our acquaintance. There was no silver, of
course; the mine "wasn't worth nothing, Mr. Stevens," but
there was a deal of old iron and wood around, and to gain
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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 Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: "I 'shamed," she said. "I think you savvy. Ese he tell me you
savvy, he tell me you no mind, tell me you love me too much. Taboo
belong me," she said, touching herself on the bosom, as she had
done upon our wedding-night. "Now I go 'way, taboo he go 'way too.
Then you get too much copra. You like more better, I think. TOFA,
ALII," says she in the native - "Farewell, chief!"
"Hold on!" I cried. "Don't be in such a hurry."
She looked at me sidelong with a smile. "You see, you get copra,"
she said, the same as you might offer candies to a child.
"Uma," said I, "hear reason. I didn't know, and that's a fact; and
Case seems to have played it pretty mean upon the pair of us. But
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