| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: require too much personal human intercourse with them, you are
like a man who, finding that he had not powder enough to fire off
a pocket-pistol, should try to better matters by using the same
quantity of ammunition in an eighty-four pound gun. For it is
this human friendship, trust, affection, which is the very thing
you have to employ towards the poor, and to call up in them.
Clubs, societies, alms, lending libraries are but dead machinery,
needful, perhaps, but, like the iron tube without the powder,
unable to send the bullet forth one single inch; dead and useless
lumber, without humanity; without the smile of the lip, the light
of the eye, the tenderness of the voice, which makes the poor
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare: I have seen better faces in my time
Than stands on any shoulder that I see
Before me at this instant.
Corn. This is some fellow
Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature. He cannot flatter, he!
An honest mind and plain- he must speak truth!
An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know which in this plainness
Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends
King Lear |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: followed in a crowd behind them so that they could not go back again.
Before long they neared the Black Pit, where a busy swarm of
Mangaboos, headed by their Princess, was engaged in piling up glass
rocks before the entrance.
"Stop, I command you!" cried the Wizard, in an angry tone, and at once
began pulling down the rocks to liberate Jim and the piglets. Instead
of opposing him in this they stood back in silence until he had made a
good-sized hole in the barrier, when by order of the Princess they all
sprang forward and thrust out their sharp thorns.
Dorothy hopped inside the opening to escape being pricked, and Zeb and
the Wizard, after enduring a few stabs from the thorns, were glad to
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
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 Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: would come bounding out to meet him. Sometimes he came round and patted me,
saying in his quiet, pleasant way, "This horse has got a good master,
and he deserves it." It was a very rare thing for any one to notice
the horse that had been working for him. I have known ladies to do it
now and then, and this gentleman, and one or two others have given me
a pat and a kind word; but ninety-nine persons out of a hundred
would as soon think of patting the steam engine that drew the train.
The gentleman was not young, and there was a forward stoop in his shoulders
as if he was always going at something. His lips were thin and close shut,
though they had a very pleasant smile; his eye was keen,
and there was something in his jaw and the motion of his head
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