| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: Yes, indeed, Socrates; there are a great many things which they hinder me
from doing.
What do you mean? I said. Do they want you to be happy, and yet hinder you
from doing what you like? for example, if you want to mount one of your
father's chariots, and take the reins at a race, they will not allow you to
do so--they will prevent you?
Certainly, he said, they will not allow me to do so.
Whom then will they allow?
There is a charioteer, whom my father pays for driving.
And do they trust a hireling more than you? and may he do what he likes
with the horses? and do they pay him for this?
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: event sufficient. Her debt, however, of course was much greater
than his, because while she had only given him a worshipper he had
given her a splendid temple. Once she said she pitied him for the
length of his list - she had counted his candles almost as often as
himself - and this made him wonder what could have been the length
of hers. He had wondered before at the coincidence of their
losses, especially as from time to time a new candle was set up.
On some occasion some accident led him to express this curiosity,
and she answered as if in surprise that he hadn't already
understood. "Oh for me, you know, the more there are the better -
there could never be too many. I should like hundreds and hundreds
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: the comyns of England, in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and
all prosperity? What comyn folk is so mighty, and so strong in
the felde, as the comyns of England?" They may have been fed on
"great shins of beef," till they became, as Benvenuto Cellini
calls them, "the English wild beasts." But they increased in
numbers slowly, if at all, for centuries. Those terrible laws of
natural selection, which issue in "the survival of the fittest,"
cleared off the less fit, in every generation, principally by
infantile disease, often by wholesale famine and pestilence; and
left, on the whole, only those of the strongest constitutions to
perpetuate a hardy, valiant, and enterprising race.
|
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 Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: you so much.'
'Yes; and another thing is, that I've humbled Mr. Hatfield so
charmingly; and another - why, you must allow me some share of
female vanity: I don't pretend to be without that most essential
attribute of our sex - and if you had seen poor Hatfield's intense
eagerness in making his ardent declaration and his flattering
proposal, and his agony of mind, that no effort of pride could
conceal, on being refused, you would have allowed I had some cause
to be gratified.'
'The greater his agony, I should think, the less your cause for
gratification.'
Agnes Grey |
