| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: parts of the one, for each of the parts is not a part of many, but of a
whole.
How do you mean?
If anything were a part of many, being itself one of them, it will surely
be a part of itself, which is impossible, and it will be a part of each one
of the other parts, if of all; for if not a part of some one, it will be a
part of all the others but this one, and thus will not be a part of each
one; and if not a part of each, one it will not be a part of any one of the
many; and not being a part of any one, it cannot be a part or anything else
of all those things of none of which it is anything.
Clearly not.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: no one could believe her silly story about Takahiro. I didn't
wait to voice my suspicion to her; I simply left her there,
staring helplessly at the confusion, and ran upstairs again:
through the dining room, past Jimmy and Aunt Selina, past Leila
Mercer and Max, who were flirting on the stairs, up, up to the
servants' bedrooms, and there my suspicions were verified. There
was every evidence of a hasty flight; in three bedrooms five
trunks stood locked and ominous, and the closets yawned with open
doors, empty. Bella had been right; there was not a servant in
the house.
As I emerged from the untidy emptiness of the servants' wing, I
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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 The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: Alliance, that infidelity and scepticism are political mistakes, not
so much because they promote vice, as because they promote (or are
supposed to promote) free thought; who see that religion (no matter
of what quality) is a most valuable assistant to the duties of a
minister of police. They will quote in their own behalf
Montesquieu's opinion that religion is a column necessary to sustain
the social edifice; they will quote, too, that sound and true saying
of De Tocqueville's: {1} "If the first American who might be met,
either in his own country, or abroad, were to be stopped and asked
whether he considered religion useful to the stability of the laws
and the good order of society, he would answer, without hesitation,
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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 A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: dates.' His voice became timidly slow at this point.
'No; don't take trouble to say more. You are a dear honest fellow
to say so much as you have; and it is not so dreadful either. It
has become a normal thing that millionaires commence by going up
to London with their tools at their back, and half-a-crown in
their pockets. That sort of origin is getting so respected,' she
continued cheerfully, 'that it is acquiring some of the odour of
Norman ancestry.'
'Ah, if I had MADE my fortune, I shouldn't mind. But I am only a
possible maker of it as yet.'
'It is quite enough. And so THIS is what your trouble was?'
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
