| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: congresses where the affairs of nations were discussed, and had he
there employed the genius with which his personal interests had
endowed him, he would undoubtedly have proved nobly useful to his
native land. Yet it is perhaps equally certain that outside of Saumur
the goodman would have cut a very sorry figure. Possibly there are
minds like certain animals which cease to breed when transplanted from
the climates in which they are born.
"M-m-mon-sieur le p-p-president, you said t-t-that b-b-bankruptcy--"
The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited
him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes
complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: property--appeared to the animals so desirable a place. As Clover looked
down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her
thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed
at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the
human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had
looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to
rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been
of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each
working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she
had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of
Major's speech. Instead--she did not know why--they had come to a time
Animal Farm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: curious, devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo"
when it is. It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not
a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop;
it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a
fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim
or not. It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its
feet up. I have not seen any other animal do that before. I said
I believed it was an enigma, but she only admired the word without
understanding it. In my judgment it is either an enigma or some
kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its
arrangements are. I never had a thing perplex me so.
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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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: of the mythopoeic faculty.
This Euhemeristic theory was welcomed as an essentially
philosophical and critical method by the unscientific Romans, to
whom it was introduced by the poet Ennius, that pioneer of
cosmopolitan Hellenicism, and it continued to characterise the tone
of ancient thought on the question of the treatment of mythology
till the rise of Christianity, when it was turned by such writers
as Augustine and Minucius Felix into a formidable weapon of attack
on Paganism. It was then abandoned by all those who still bent the
knee to Athena or to Zeus, and a general return, aided by the
philosophic mystics of Alexandria, to the allegorising principle of
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