| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Picus leaped down from the bough of a tree, as majestic a
sovereign as any in the world, dressed in a long purple robe
and gorgeous yellow stockings, with a splendidly wrought collar
about his neck, and a golden crown upon his head. He and King
Ulysses exchanged with one another the courtesies which belong
to their elevated rank. But from that time forth, King Picus
was no longer proud of his crown and his trappings of royalty,
nor of the fact of his being a king; he felt himself merely the
upper servant of his people, and that it must be his life-long
labor to make them better and happier.
As for the lions, tigers, and wolves (though Circe would have
Tanglewood Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: function of the skin is purely protective, absorbent, excretive, and
tactile, the circulation of the blood and all its mechanism would not
correspond with the transsubstantiation of our Will, as the
circulation of the nerve fluid corresponds to that of the Mind?
Finally, whether the more or less rapid affluence of these two real
substances may not be the result of a certain perfection or
imperfection of organs whose conditions require investigation in every
manifestation?
Having set forth these principles, he proposed to class the phenomena
of human life in two series of distinct results, demanding, with the
ardent insistency of conviction, a special analysis for each. In fact,
Louis Lambert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: Arethusa. The Commissary was not, I think, a practised literary
man; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and embarked on
the composition of the PROCES-VERBAL, than he became distinctly
more uncivil and began to show a predilection for that simplest of
all forms of repartee: "You lie!" Several times the Arethusa let
it pass, and then suddenly flared up, refused to accept more
insults or to answer further questions, defied the Commissary to do
his worst, and promised him, if he did, that he should bitterly
repent it. Perhaps if he had worn this proud front from the first,
instead of beginning with a sense of entertainment and then going
on to argue, the thing might have turned otherwise; for even at
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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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: the terms, will, consciousness, and intention. Actions, which were
at first voluntary, soon became habitual, and at last hereditary,
and may then be performed even in opposition to the will.
Although they often reveal the state of the mind, this result was
not at first either intended or expected. Even such words as that
"certain movements serve as a means of expression" are apt to mislead,
as they imply that this was their primary purpose or object.
This, however, seems rarely or never to have been the case;
the movements having been at first either of some direct use,
or the indirect effect of the excited state of the sensorium.
An infant may scream either intentionally or instinctively to show
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
