| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: animals as mice have saved my life. How strange it all is!
But, comrades, what shall we do now?"
"We must journey on until we find the road of yellow brick again,"
said Dorothy, "and then we can keep on to the Emerald City."
So, the Lion being fully refreshed, and feeling quite himself again,
they all started upon the journey, greatly enjoying the walk through the soft,
fresh grass; and it was not long before they reached the road of yellow brick
and turned again toward the Emerald City where the Great Oz dwelt.
The road was smooth and well paved, now, and the country about
was beautiful, so that the travelers rejoiced in leaving the
forest far behind, and with it the many dangers they had met in
The Wizard of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: 'Omnis determinatio est negatio,' but 'Omnis negatio est determinatio';--
not, All distinction is negation, but, All negation is distinction. Not-
being is the unfolding or determining of Being, and is a necessary element
in all other things that are. We should be careful to observe, first, that
Plato does not identify Being with Not-being; he has no idea of progression
by antagonism, or of the Hegelian vibration of moments: he would not have
said with Heracleitus, 'All things are and are not, and become and become
not.' Secondly, he has lost sight altogether of the other sense of Not-
being, as the negative of Being; although he again and again recognizes the
validity of the law of contradiction. Thirdly, he seems to confuse
falsehood with negation. Nor is he quite consistent in regarding Not-being
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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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: The tendency to retch from a fetid odour is immediately strengthened
in a curious manner by some degree of habit, though soon lost by longer
familiarity with the cause of offence and by voluntary restraint.
For instance, I wished to clean the skeleton of a bird, which had not
been sufficiently macerated, and the smell made my servant and myself
(we not having had much experience in such work) retch so violently,
that we were compelled to desist. During the previous days I had
examined some other skeletons, which smelt slightly; yet the odour
did not in the least affect me, but, subsequently for several days,
whenever I handled these same skeletons, they made me retch.
From the answers received from my correspondents it appears that
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
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 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: herself that men of genius must know how to love with more perfection
than conceited fops, men of the world, diplomatists, and even
soldiers, although such beings have nothing else to do. She was a
connoisseur, and knew very well that the capacity for love reveals
itself chiefly in mere nothings. A woman well informed in such matters
can read her future in a simple gesture; just as Cuvier could say from
the fragment of a bone: This belonged to an animal of such or such
dimensions, with or without horns, carnivorous, herbivorous,
amphibious, etc., age, so many thousand years. Sure now of finding in
d'Arthez as much imagination in love as there was in his written
style, she thought it wise to bring him up at once to the highest
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