| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: "I am in for this house," thought he. "Little as I like the way it
comes to me, I am in for it now, and I may as well take the good
along with the evil."
So he told the architect all that he wished, and how he would have
that house furnished, and about the pictures on the wall and the
knick-knacks on the tables; and he asked the man plainly for how
much he would undertake the whole affair.
The architect put many questions, and took his pen and made a
computation; and when he had done he named the very sum that Keawe
had inherited.
Lopaka and Keawe looked at one another and nodded.
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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 Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: France, and you will stay there,--lazy, idle, happy. You may be as
ambitious as Napoleon, as poetic as Lord Byron, and yet a power
unknown, invisible, will compel you to bury your poetry within your
soul and turn your projects into dreams.
The illustrious Gaudissart was fated to encounter here in Vouvray one
of those indigenous jesters whose jests are not intolerable solely
because they have reached the perfection of the mocking art. Right or
wrong, the Tourangians are fond of inheriting from their parents.
Consequently the doctrines of Saint-Simon were especially hated and
villified among them. In Touraine hatred and villification take the
form of superb disdain and witty maliciousness worthy of the land of
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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 Call of the Wild by Jack London: blows which now fell upon him. Like his mates, he barely able to
get up, but, unlike them, he had made up his mind not to get up.
He had a vague feeling of impending doom. This had been strong
upon him when he pulled in to the bank, and it had not departed
from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he had felt under his
feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at hand, out
there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive him.
He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone
was he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued
to fall upon him, the spark of life within flickered and went
down. It was nearly out. He felt strangely numb. As though from
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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 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: be noted as forming two sub-breeds; finally, after the lapse of centuries,
the sub-breeds would become converted into two well-established and
distinct breeds. As the differences slowly become greater, the inferior
animals with intermediate characters, being neither very swift nor very
strong, will have been neglected, and will have tended to disappear. Here,
then, we see in man's productions the action of what may be called the
principle of divergence, causing differences, at first barely appreciable,
steadily to increase, and the breeds to diverge in character both from each
other and from their common parent.
But how, it may be asked, can any analogous principle apply in nature? I
believe it can and does apply most efficiently, from the simple
On the Origin of Species |
