| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: coal-docks and machine-shops, and neared the small door cut
through its planking, a voice rang out clear and strong above the
din of the mixers:--
"Hold on, ye wall-eyed macaroni! Do ye want that fall cut? Turn
that snatch-block, Cully, and tighten up the watch-tackle. Here,
cap'n; lend a hand. Lively now, lively, before I straighten out
the hull gang of ye!"
The voice had a ring of unquestioned authority. It was not
quarrelsome or abusive or bullying--only earnest and forceful.
"Ease away on that guy! Ease away, I tell ye!" it continued,
rising in intensity. "So--all gone! Now, haul out, Cully, and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: I have slipped out at a door in the other, and am gone before he can
catch me, and have reached and am lost in the shadows of the forest
by the time he has discovered that I am nowhere to be found.
The brightness of Peter's perfections are sullied however
by one spot, and that is, that as age creeps upon him, he not
only cannot hold the horses in if they don't want to be held in,
but he goes to sleep sometimes on his box if I have him out too
soon after lunch, and has upset me twice within the last year--
once last winter out of a sleigh, and once this summer,
when the horses shied at a bicycle, and bolted into the ditch on
one side of the chaussee (German for high road), and the bicycle
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: colony or to any other city, may go where he likes, retaining his property.
But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and
administer the state, and still remains, has entered into an implied
contract that he will do as we command him. And he who disobeys us is, as
we maintain, thrice wrong: first, because in disobeying us he is
disobeying his parents; secondly, because we are the authors of his
education; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will
duly obey our commands; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our
commands are unjust; and we do not rudely impose them, but give him the
alternative of obeying or convincing us;--that is what we offer, and he
does neither.
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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 Theaetetus by Plato: shoe--that is to say, put the seal or stamp on the wrong object: or 2ndly,
when knowing both of you I only see one; or when, seeing and knowing you
both, I fail to identify the impression and the object. But there could be
no error when perception and knowledge correspond.
The waxen block in the heart of a man's soul, as I may say in the words of
Homer, who played upon the words ker and keros, may be smooth and deep, and
large enough, and then the signs are clearly marked and lasting, and do not
get confused. But in the 'hairy heart,' as the all-wise poet sings, when
the wax is muddy or hard or moist, there is a corresponding confusion and
want of retentiveness; in the muddy and impure there is indistinctness, and
still more in the hard, for there the impressions have no depth of wax, and
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