| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: after you left me contemptuously to my distress. Don't pretend
you didn't hear me call after you. Oh, yes, you heard. The whole
ship heard me for I had no shame."
"Yes, you came," said Lingard, violently. "But have you really
come? I can't believe my eyes! Are you really here?"
"This is a dark spot, luckily," said Mrs. Travers. "But can you
really have any doubt?" she added, significantly.
He made a sudden movement toward her, betraying so much passion
that Mrs. Travers thought, "I shan't come out alive this time,"
and yet he was there, motionless before her, as though he had
never stirred. It was more as though the earth had made a sudden
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: flourish on the weakness of our poor? The two tribes of savages the
human baboon and the handsome dwarf, who will not speak lest it impede
him in his task, may be accepted as the two varieties who are
continually present with us--the vicious, lazy lout, and the toiling
slave. They, too, have lost all faith of life being other than it is
and has been. As in Africa, it is all trees trees, trees with no other
world conceivable; so is it here--it is all vice and poverty and
crime. To many the world is all slum, with the Workhouse as an
intermediate purgatory before the grave. And just as Mr. Stanley's
Zanzibaris lost faith, and could only be induced to plod on in brooding
sullenness of dull despair, so the most of our social reformers, no
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: Stretching his burden on the floor, Stone tore open the man's shirt
and felt his heart, while Clymer, spying a water cooler, sped across
the room and returned immediately with a brimming glass.
"Here's water," he said, but Stone refused the proffered glass.
"No use," he announced. "The man is dead."
"Dead!" echoed the deputy marshal. "Well, I'll be - say, doctor,"
but Stone had darted out of the room, and he turned open-mouthed to
Clymer. "If it wasn't Doctor Stone I would say he was crazy," he
declared.
"Tut! Feel the man's heart and convince yourself," suggested
Clymer tartly, and the deputy marshal, dropping on one knee, did so.
The Red Seal |
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 Apology by Plato: to hope that death is a good; for one of two things--either death is a
state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a
change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you
suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him
who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For
if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed
even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of
his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed
in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think
that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will
not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if
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