| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: his back and sides.
"We have one here that cannot endure long," said Baloo; and he
looked toward the boy he loved.
"I?" said Mowgli indignantly, sitting up in the water. "I have
no long fur to cover my bones, but--but if THY hide were taken
off, Baloo----"
Hathi shook all over at the idea, and Baloo said severely:
"Man-cub, that is not seemly to tell a Teacher of the Law.
Never have I been seen without my hide."
"Nay, I meant no harm, Baloo; but only that thou art, as it
were, like the cocoanut in the husk, and I am the same cocoanut
The Second Jungle Book |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: draw the bond, and you to be at nae charge wi' the writings."
"Cut short thy jargon, and begone," said the Dwarf; "thy
loquacious bull-headed honesty makes thee a more intolerable
plague than the light-fingered courtier who would take a man's
all without troubling him with either thanks, explanation, or
apology. Hence, I say! thou art one of those tame slaves whose
word is as good as their bond. Keep the money, principal and
interest, until I demand it of thee."
"But," continued the pertinacious Borderer, "we are a' life-like
and death-like, Elshie, and there really should be some black and
white on this transaction. Sae just make me a minute, or
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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 Lesser Hippias by Plato: about calculation? And that person is he who is good at calculation--the
arithmetician?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Who, then, Hippias, is discovered to be false at calculation?
Is he not the good man? For the good man is the able man, and he is the
true man.
HIPPIAS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Do you not see, then, that the same man is false and also true
about the same matters? And the true man is not a whit better than the
false; for indeed he is the same with him and not the very opposite, as you
were just now imagining.
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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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: shove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds and
blues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with the
advertisement of a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty performing seals,
lions, tigers ... Craning forwards, for she was short-sighted, she read it
out ... "will visit this town," she read. It was terribly dangerous work
for a one-armed man, she exclaimed, to stand on top of a ladder like
that--his left arm had been cut off in a reaping machine two years ago.
"Let us all go!" she cried, moving on, as if all those riders and horses
had filled her with childlike exultation and made her forget her pity.
"Let's go," he said, repeating her words, clicking them out, however, with
a self-consciousness that made her wince. "Let us all go to the circus."
To the Lighthouse |
