| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: GUNNER. Who chased him up it? Dont be ashamed. Be fearless. Be
truthful.
TARLETON. Gunner: will you go to Paris for a fortnight? I'll pay
your expenses.
HYPATIA. What do you mean?
GUNNER. There was a silent witness in the Turkish bath.
TARLETON. I found him hiding there. Whatever went on here, he saw
and heard. Thats what he means.
PERCIVAL. _[sternly approaching Gunner, and speaking with deep but
contained indignation]_ Am I to understand you as daring to put
forward the monstrous and blackguardly lie that this lady behaved
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: his thoughts sped away to his native France, only to return again
to wonder whether the depths of ocean would reveal any traces
of the Algerian metropolis.
"Is it not impossible," he murmured aloud, "that any city
should disappear so completely? Would not the loftiest
eminences of the city at least be visible? Surely some
portion of the Casbah must still rise above the waves?
The imperial fort, too, was built upon an elevation of 750 feet;
it is incredible that it should be so totally submerged.
Unless some vestiges of these are found, I shall begin to suspect
that the whole of Africa has been swallowed in some vast abyss."
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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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: and all else that had belonged to him. At every turn the old man could
not suppress some mournful exclamation, showing what hopes Louis'
precocious genius had raised, and the terrible grief into which this
irreparable ruin had plunged him.
"That young fellow knew everything, my dear sir!" said he, laying on
the table a volume containing Spinoza's works. "How could so well
organized a brain go astray?"
"Indeed, monsieur," said I, "was it not perhaps the result of its
being so highly organized? If he really is a victim to the malady as
yet unstudied in all its aspects, which is known simply as madness, I
am inclined to attribute it to his passion. His studies and his mode
Louis Lambert |
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 Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: Stanley whom every one saw, not the everyday one; but a timid, sensitive,
innocent Stanley who knelt down every night to say his prayers, and who
longed to be good. Stanley was simple. If he believed in people--as he
believed in her, for instance--it was with his whole heart. He could not
be disloyal; he could not tell a lie. And how terribly he suffered if he
thought any one--she--was not being dead straight, dead sincere with him!
"This is too subtle for me!" He flung out the words, but his open,
quivering, distraught look was like the look of a trapped beast.
But the trouble was--here Linda felt almost inclined to laugh, though
Heaven knows it was no laughing matter--she saw her Stanley so seldom.
There were glimpses, moments, breathing spaces of calm, but all the rest of
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