| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: his majesty's table.
Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one
right angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the
contempt they bear to practical geometry, which they despise as
vulgar and mechanic; those instructions they give being too
refined for the intellects of their workmen, which occasions
perpetual mistakes. And although they are dexterous enough upon a
piece of paper, in the management of the rule, the pencil, and
the divider, yet in the common actions and behaviour of life, I
have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so
slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other subjects,
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: fetch Herr Bergowitz.
"He came, and we stood about as if we were half stunned by the awful
shock. Thus can the letting of a few drops of blood from one man's
veins drain the life of a nation.
"Presently Herr Bergowitz stooped and picked up a darkish stone the
size of an orange which he saw under the table. He examined it closely
through his great glasses with the eye of science.
"'A fragment,' said he, 'of a detonating meteor. The most remarkable
one in twenty years exploded above this city a little after midnight
this morning.'
"The professor looked quickly up at the ceiling. We saw the blue sky
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: It was Mr. Harbison.
"I--I thought you were--it is very late," I managed to say, with
dry lips. "Do you know where the electric switch is?"
"Mrs. Wilson!" It was clear he had not known me before. "Why, no;
don't you?"
"I am all confused," I muttered, and beat a retreat into the
dining room. There, in the friendly light, we could at least see
each other, and I think he was as much impressed by the fact that
I had not undressed as I was by the fact that he HAD, partly. He
wore a hideous dressing gown of Jimmy's, much too small, and his
hair, parted and plastered down in the early evening, stood up in
|
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 Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: thinker, the superiority of the politician, the superiority of wealth.
Is not that as much as to say, genius, power, and money, or, in yet
other words--the cause, the means, and the effect? But suppose a kind
of social tabula rasa, every social unit perfectly equal, an increase
of population everywhere in the same ratio, and give the same amount
of land to each family; it would not be long before you would again
have all the existing inequalities of fortune; it is glaringly
evident, therefore, that there are such things as superiority of
fortune, of thinking capacity, and of power, and we must make up our
minds to this fact; but the masses will always regard rights that have
been most honestly acquired as privileges, and as a wrong done to
|
