| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: the world applies to writers, to statesmen, to everybody who begins
with some specialty before being hailed as omniscient; so Popinot's
fate was sealed, and he was hedged round to do a particular kind of
work. Magistrates, attorneys, pleaders, all who pasture on the legal
common, distinguish two elements in every case--law and equity. Equity
is the outcome of facts, law is the application of principles to
facts. A man may be right in equity but wrong in law, without any
blame to the judge. Between his conscience and the facts there is a
whole gulf of determining reasons unknown to the judge, but which
condemn or legitimatize the act. A judge is not God; the duty is to
adapt facts to principles, to judge cases of infinite variety while
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: the texture of life seems thinner."
"Oh, yes, indeed! I know what you mean--to lose the people one has always
seen from the cradle. Well, she has gone away, she has taken her memories
out of the world, the old times, the old stories. Nobody, except a little
nutshell of people here, knows or cares anything about her any more; and
soon even the nutshell will be empty." He paused, and then, as if
brushing aside his churchyard mood, he translated into his changed
thought another classic quotation: "But we can't dawdle over the 'tears
of things'; it's Nature's law. Only, when I think of the rice-banks and
the boots and the pistol, I wonder if the Newport ladies, for all their
high-balls, could do any better!"
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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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: creases, under some clear glass bell. The perfection of household
care, of high polish and finish, always reigned in her rooms, but
they now looked most as if everything had been wound up, tucked in,
put away, so that she might sit with folded hands and with nothing
more to do. She was "out of it," to Marcher's vision; her work was
over; she communicated with him as across some gulf or from some
island of rest that she had already reached, and it made him feel
strangely abandoned. Was it--or rather wasn't it--that if for so
long she had been watching with him the answer to their question
must have swum into her ken and taken on its name, so that her
occupation was verily gone? He had as much as charged her with
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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 1492 by Mary Johntson: I do not know what of beast and bird and monstrous idol
forms. We stared. The place was shadowy and very
silent. At last with an oath said Francisco de Porras, ``Take
the gold!'' But the Adelantado cried, ``No!'' and going
out of the hut that was almost a house we left the dead
cacique and his crown and mantle and golden breastplate.
Two wooden figures at the door grinned upon us. We saw
now what seemed a light brown powder strewed around
and across the threshold. One of our men, stooping, took
up a pinch then dropped it hastily. ``It is the same they
threw against us!''
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