| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: Trina came and went about McTeague, sitting on the ground,
his shirt, a mere blur of red and white, detaching itself
violently from the background of pale-green grass. Between
the two groups was the torn and trampled bit of turf, the
wrestling ring; the picnic baskets, together with empty beer
bottles, broken egg-shells, and discarded sardine tins, were
scattered here and there. In the middle of the improvised
wrestling ring the sleeve of Marcus's shirt fluttered
occasionally in the sea breeze.
Nobody was paying any attention to Selina. All at once she
began to giggle hysterically again, then cried out with a
McTeague |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: steps of the veranda, Wallie below her, stirring the dead leaves
on the walk with his stick, and looking up at her with boyish
adoring eyes when she spoke. He was never very articulate with
her, and her trouble had given her a strange new aloofness that
almost frightened him. But that night, when she shivered a little,
he reached up and touched her hand.
"You're cold," he said almost roughly. He was sometimes rather
savage, for fear he might be tender.
"I'm not cold. I think it's the dead leaves."
"Dead leaves?" he repeated, puzzled. "You're a queer girl,
Elizabeth. Why dead leaves?"
The Breaking Point |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: London, who are tainted with a form of sexual psychopathy. Yet
again there are such as are tainted with hereditary madness, and
especially the epileptics and epileptoids, who may also be
assigned to the class of born criminals, according to the
plausible hypothesis of Lombroso as to the fundamental identity of
congenital criminality, moral madness, and epilepsy. I have
always found in my own experience that outrageous murders, not to
be explained according to the ordinary psychology of criminals,
are accompanied by psychical epilepsy, or larvea.
Born or instinctive criminals are those who most frequently
present the organic and psychological characteristics established
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: nothing regarding the current. An 'axis' here can only mean a
direction; and what we want to be able to conceive of is, not the
axis along which the power acts, but the nature and mode of action
of the power itself. He objects to the vagueness of De la Rive;
but the fact is, that both he and De la Rive labour under the same
difficulty. Neither wishes to commit himself to the notion of a
current compounded of two electricities flowing in two opposite
directions: but the time had not come, nor is it yet come, for the
displacement of this provisional fiction by the true mechanical
conception. Still, however indistinct the theoretic notions of
Faraday at this time may be, the facts which are rising before him
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