| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: loaded up, I went on to look for the black-maned beauty who had killed
Kaptein. Slowly, and with the greatest care, I proceeded up the kloof,
searching every bush and tuft of grass as I went. It was wonderfully
exciting, work, for I never was sure from one moment to another but that
he would be on me. I took comfort, however, from the reflection that a
lion rarely attacks a man--rarely, I say; sometimes he does, as you will
see--unless he is cornered or wounded. I must have been nearly an hour
hunting after that lion. Once I thought I saw something move in a clump
of tambouki grass, but I could not be sure, and when I trod out the
grass I could not find him.
"At last I worked up to the head of the kloof, which made a cul-de-sac.
Long Odds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: non-existence of a vacuum, the fact that objects push one another round,
and that they change places, passing severally into their proper positions
as they are divided or combined.
Such as we have seen, is the nature and such are the causes of respiration,
--the subject in which this discussion originated. For the fire cuts the
food and following the breath surges up within, fire and breath rising
together and filling the veins by drawing up out of the belly and pouring
into them the cut portions of the food; and so the streams of food are kept
flowing through the whole body in all animals. And fresh cuttings from
kindred substances, whether the fruits of the earth or herb of the field,
which God planted to be our daily food, acquire all sorts of colours by
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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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: scientific investigation of the copper resistance of the conductor,
and the insulating resistance and specific inductive capacity of
its gutta-percha coating, in the factory, in various stages of
manufacture; and he was the very first to introduce systematically
into practice the grand system of absolute measurement founded in
Germany by Gauss and Weber. The immense value of this step, if
only in respect to the electric telegraph, is amply appreciated by
all who remember or who have read something of the history of
submarine telegraphy; but it can scarcely be known generally how
much it is due to Jenkin.
Looking to the article 'Telegraph (Electric)' in the last volume of
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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 Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: " 'An end of love! I am dead to all pleasure, to all human emotions!'
"As he spoke, he seized a hammer and hurled it at the statue with such
excessive force that he missed it. He thought that he had destroyed
that monument of his madness, and thereupon he drew his sword again,
and raised it to kill the singer. Zambinella uttered shriek after
shriek. Three men burst into the studio at that moment, and the
sculptor fell, pieced by three daggers.
" 'From Cardinal Cicognara,' said one of the men.
" 'A benefaction worthy of a Christian,' retorted the Frenchman, as he
breathed his last.
"These ominous emissaries told Zambinella of the anxiety of his
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