| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: stone at her.' It was worth while living to have said that.
Like all poetical natures he loved ignorant people. He knew that
in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great
idea. But he could not stand stupid people, especially those who
are made stupid by education: people who are full of opinions not
one of which they even understand, a peculiarly modern type, summed
up by Christ when he describes it as the type of one who has the
key of knowledge, cannot use it himself, and does not allow other
people to use it, though it may be made to open the gate of God's
Kingdom. His chief war was against the Philistines. That is the
war every child of light has to wage. Philistinism was the note of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: on which lay open a black volume of philosophy. She chose a thread
from the vari-coloured tangle that lay in her lap, and sewed
red into the bark of a tree, or yellow into the river torrent.
She was working at a great design of a tropical river running
through a tropical forest, where spotted deer would eventually browse
upon masses of fruit, bananas, oranges, and giant pomegranates,
while a troop of naked natives whirled darts into the air.
Between the stitches she looked to one side and read a sentence
about the Reality of Matter, or the Nature of Good. Round her men
in blue jerseys knelt and scrubbed the boards, or leant over the rails
and whistled, and not far off Mr. Pepper sat cutting up roots with
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: month was to elapse and required at least a three-fourths majority, with
the additional proviso that not less than 500 members of the National
Assembly voted. They thereby only made the impotent attempt, still to
exercise as a parliamentary minority, to which in their mind's eye they
prophetically saw themselves reduced, a power, that, at this very time,
when they still disposed over the parliamentary majority and over all
the machinery of government, was daily slipping from their weak hands.
Finally, the Constitution entrusts itself for safe keeping, in a
melodramatic paragraph, "to the watchfulness and patriotism of the whole
French people, and of each individual Frenchman," after having just
before, in another paragraph entrusted the "watchful" and the
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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 The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: of my thumb. I took it, and saw it had the form of a regular
octahedron, with the curved faces peculiar to the most precious of
minerals. I took out my penknife and tried to scratch it--vainly.
Leaning forward towards the gas-lamp, I tried the thing on my
watch-glass, and scored a white line across that with the greatest
ease.
I looked at my interlocutor with rising curiosity. "It
certainly is rather like a diamond. But, if so, it is a Behemoth
of diamonds. Where did you get it?"
"I tell you I made it," he said. "Give it back to me."
He replaced it hastily and buttoned his jacket. "I will sell
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