| 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: military men, who, as Englishmen, should have known better. We
were told again and again, during the late war, that the moral
effect of such a success had been great; that the MORALE of the
troops was excellent; or again, that the MORALE of the troops had
suffered, or even that they were somewhat demoralised. But when
one came to test what was really meant by these fine words, one
discovered that morals had nothing to do with the facts which they
expressed; that the troops were in the one case actuated simply by
the animal passion of hope, in the other simply by the animal
passion of fear. This abuse of the word "moral" has crossed, I am
sorry to say, the Atlantic; and a witty American, whom we must
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: came out he grew a beard, and wore eyeglasses, and changed his
name. Had a quick, crisp way of talkin', and he cultivated a drawl
and went west and started in business. Real estate, I think.
Anyway, the second month he was there in walks a fool he used to
know and bellows: `Why if it ain't Bill! Hello, Bill! I thought
you was doing time yet.' That was enough. Ted, you can black your
face, and dye your hair, and squint, and some fine day, sooner or
later, somebody'll come along and blab the whole thing. And say,
the older it gets the worse it sounds, when it does come out.
Stick around here where you grew up, Ted."
Ted clasped and unclasped his hands uncomfortably. "I can't
Buttered Side Down |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,
Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly
Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!
Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he
Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul
Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty
Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal
Where love and duty mingle! Him at least
The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom's feast;
But we are Learning's changelings, know by rote
The clarion watchword of each Grecian school
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through
life the ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action:
it had been the motive which he had poured out in his prayers.
Who would use money and position better than he meant to use them?
Who could surpass him in self-abhorrence and exaltation of God's cause?
And to Mr. Bulstrode God's cause was something distinct from his own
rectitude of conduct: it enforced a discrimination of God's enemies,
who were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it would be
as well if possible to keep out of money and consequent influence.
Also, profitable investments in trades where the power of the prince
of this world showed its most active devices, became sanctified by a
Middlemarch |
