| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: and how the stalked star-fish, which you mistook for a flower,
ever got into the stone.
Then do you think me silly for fancying that a fossil star-fish
was a flower?
I should be silly if I did. There is no silliness in not knowing
what you cannot know. You can only guess about new things, which
you have never seen before, by comparing them with old things,
which you have seen before; and you had seen flowers, and snakes,
and fishes' backbones, and made a very fair guess from them.
After all, some of these stalked star-fish are so like flowers,
lilies especially, that they are called Encrinites; and the whole
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: contracted and lowered. What was pride in the former becomes
puerile vanity and paltry ostentation in the latter. The
servants of a great man are commonly most punctilious as to the
marks of respect due to him, and they attach more importance to
his slightest privileges than he does himself. In France a few
of these old servants of the aristocracy are still to be met with
here and there; they have survived their race, which will soon
disappear with them altogether. In the United States I never saw
anyone at all like them. The Americans are not only unacquainted
with the kind of man, but it is hardly possible to make them
understand that such ever existed. It is scarcely less difficult
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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 Kenilworth by Walter Scott: "Thou art a devil, Varney," said Leicester hastily; "but thou
hast the mastery for the present--I follow thee."
Varney replied not, but led the way out of the palace, and
towards the river, while his master followed him, as if
mechanically; until, looking back, he said in a tone which
savoured of familiarity at least, if not of authority, "How is
this, my lord? Your cloak hangs on one side--your hose are
unbraced--permit me--"
"Thou art a fool, Varney, as well as a knave," said Leicester,
shaking him off, and rejecting his officious assistance. "We are
best thus, sir; when we require you to order our person, it is
Kenilworth |
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 Philebus by Plato: body and soul feel together, and this feeling is termed consciousness. And
memory is the preservation of consciousness, and reminiscence is the
recovery of consciousness. Now the memory of pleasure, when a man is in
pain, is the memory of the opposite of his actual bodily state, and is
therefore not in the body, but in the mind. And there may be an
intermediate state, in which a person is balanced between pleasure and
pain; in his body there is want which is a cause of pain, but in his mind a
sure hope of replenishment, which is pleasant. (But if the hope be
converted into despair, he has two pains and not a balance of pain and
pleasure.) Another question is raised: May not pleasures, like opinions,
be true and false? In the sense of being real, both must be admitted to be
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