| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: have instantly decided the controversy. 'The contact theory,'
he urged, 'assumed that a force which is able to overcome powerful
resistance, as for instance that of the conductors, good or bad,
through which the current passes, and that again of the electrolytic
action where bodies are decomposed by it, can arise out of nothing;
that, without any change in the acting matter, or the consumption of
any generating force, a current shall be produced which shall go on
for ever against a constant resistance, or only be stopped, as in
the voltaic trough, by the ruins which its exertion has heaped up in
its own course. This would indeed be a creation of power, and is
like no other force in nature. We have many processes by which the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: few years' antiquity upon the level vale. He kept along the edge
of this high, unenclosed country, and the sky behind him being
deep violet, she could still see white Darling in relief upon it--
a mere speck now--a Wouvermans eccentricity reduced to microscopic
dimensions. Upon this high ground he gradually disappeared.
Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in
pure love of her, by one who had always been true, impressed to
convey her husband away from her to the side of a new-found idol.
While she was musing on the vicissitudes of horses and wives, she
discerned shapes moving up the valley towards her, quite near at
hand, though till now hidden by the hedges. Surely they were
The Woodlanders |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: watched his tormentor mount the stairs and enter the whisky-
shop, there floated into his mind a sense as of something
long ago familiar. At that he started fully awake, and
stared at the shop-fronts. Yes, he knew them; but when? and
how? Long since, he thought; and then, casting his eye
through the front glass, which had been recently occluded by
the figure of the jarvey, he beheld the tree-tops of the
rookery in Randolph Crescent. He was close to home - home,
where he had thought, at that hour, to be sitting in the
well-remembered drawing-room in friendly converse; and,
instead - !
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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 The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "What, Peter?"
"We could marry. If you cared for me even a little it--it might
not be so bad for you."
"But I am not in love with you. I care for you, of course,
but--not that way, Peter. And I do not wish to marry."
"Not even if I wish it very much?"
"No."
"If you are thinking of my future--"
"I'm thinking for both of us. And although just now you think you
care a little for me, you do not care enough, Peter. You are
lonely and I am the only person you see much, so you think you
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