| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: "that the shock of each meteor on the sun ought to produce a heat
equal to that of 4,000 masses of coal of an equal bulk."
"And what is the solar heat?" asked Michel.
"It is equal to that produced by the combustion of a stratum of
coal surrounding the sun to a depth of forty-seven miles."
"And that heat----"
"Would be able to boil two billions nine hundred millions of
cubic myriameters [2] of water."
[2] The myriameter is equal to rather more than 10,936
cubic yards English.
"And it does not roast us!" exclaimed Michel.
From the Earth to the Moon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: But the envelope remained.
"Do you think that he has
gone to fetch a real live policeman?
I am afraid it is a summons,"
said Pickles.
"No," replied Ginger, who
had opened the envelope, "it is
the rates and taxes, 3 pounds 19
11 3/4." [pounds are British money,
the 19 is schillings, and then pence]
"This is the last straw," said
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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 Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: a catastrophe. In no country in the world is the love of
property more active and more anxious than in the United States;
nowhere does the majority display less inclination for those
principles which threaten to alter, in whatever manner, the laws
of property. I have often remarked that theories which are of a
revolutionary nature, since they cannot be put in practice
without a complete and sometimes a sudden change in the state of
property and persons, are much less favorably viewed in the
United States than in the great monarchical countries of Europe:
if some men profess them, the bulk of the people reject them with
instinctive abhorrence. I do not hesitate to say that most of
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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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: and (I am afraid) as wicked, as people ever were on earth. Fair
gardens, vineyards, olive-yards, covered the mountain slopes. It
was held to be one of the Paradises of the world. As for the
mountain's being a burning mountain, who ever thought of that? To
be sure, on the top of it was a great round crater, or cup, a mile
or more across, and a few hundred yards deep. But that was all
overgrown with bushes and wild vines, full of boars and deer.
What sign of fire was there in that? To be sure, also, there was
an ugly place below by the sea-shore, called the Phlegraen fields,
where smoke and brimstone came out of the ground, and a lake
called Avernus over which poisonous gases hung, and which (old
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