| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: wreck of his boat. The miser had had faith, and had risen to go, but
he tried to take his gold with him, and it was his gold that dragged
him down to the bottom. The learned man had scoffed at the charlatan
and at the fools who listened to him; and when he heard the mysterious
stranger propose to the passengers that they should walk on the waves,
he began to laugh, and the ocean swallowed him. The girl was dragged
down into the depths by her lover. The Bishop and the older lady went
to the bottom, heavily laden with sins, it may be, but still more
heavily laden with incredulity and confidence in idols, weighted down
by devotion, into which alms-deeds and true religion entered but
little.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: fisherman, smuggler, etc.; which worthy, after much fruitless
examination (wherein examinate was afflicted with extreme deafness
and loss of memory), departed to Exeter gaol, on a charge of
"harboring priests, Jesuits, gipsies, and other suspect and
traitorous persons."
Poor John Braund, whose motive for entertaining the said ugly
customers had probably been not treason, but a wife, seven
children, and arrears of rent, did not thrive under the change from
the pure air of Lundy to the pestiferous one of Exeter gaol, made
infamous, but two years after (if I recollect right), by a "black
assizes," nearly as fatal as that more notorious one at Oxford; for
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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 The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: does not spring from my imagination, but from the real danger by
which I am surrounded. I am very hungry, but I do not dare to eat
anything except eggs, which cannot be tampered with. I tasted some
soup yesterday, and it seemed to me that it had a queer taste. I
will eat nothing that is at all suspicious. I will be in my full
senses when my murderers come; they shall not kill me by poison at
least.
"When I came to my senses again - it was the evening of the day
before yesterday - I found a letter on the little table beside my
bed. It was written in French, in a handwriting that I had never
seen before, and there was no signature.
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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 Intentions by Oscar Wilde: shepherd. In the wolfskin of Pierre Vidal we flee before the
hounds, and in the armour of Lancelot we ride from the bower of the
Queen. We have whispered the secret of our love beneath the cowl
of Abelard, and in the stained raiment of Villon have put our shame
into song. We can see the dawn through Shelley's eyes, and when we
wander with Endymion the Moon grows amorous of our youth. Ours is
the anguish of Atys, and ours the weak rage and noble sorrows of
the Dane. Do you think that it is the imagination that enables us
to live these countless lives? Yes: it is the imagination; and
the imagination is the result of heredity. It is simply
concentrated race-experience.
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