| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a
voice as she could manage--and then she scrambled back into the
arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began
winding up the ball again. But she didn't get on very fast, as
she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and
sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee,
pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then
putting out one paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would
be glad to help, if it might.
`Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?' Alice began. `You'd
have guessed if you'd been up in the window with me--only Dinah
Through the Looking-Glass |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: for men to do"--that is certainly an imperative different from
the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right
imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-
builders of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to
perform.
15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist
on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense
of the idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be
causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis,
if not as heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the
external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a
Beyond Good and Evil |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: This consideration, however, was more philosophical in connection
with other men's wives. He found very little in it to palliate what
he had overheard, submerged in the 'Times of India', that afternoon.
And to put an edge on it, the thing had been said by one of his own
juniors. Luckily the boy had left the room without discovering who
was behind the 'Times of India'. Innes felt that he should be
grateful for having been spared the exigency of defending his wife
against a flippant word to which she had very probably laid herself
open. He was very angry, and it is perhaps not surprising that he
did not pause to consider how far his anger was due to the
humiliating necessity of speaking to her about it. She was coming
|
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 Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: had been given him by a weather-beaten sailor. But Creedle
carried about with him on his uneventful rounds these silent
testimonies of war, sport, and adventure, and thought nothing of
their associations or their stories.
Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the
secondary intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on
without requiring the sovereign attention of the head, the minds
of its professors wandered considerably from the objects before
them; hence the tales, chronicles, and ramifications of family
history which were recounted here were of a very exhaustive kind,
and sometimes so interminable as to defy description.
The Woodlanders |
