| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: little he knew! How humbling to his pride it would have been had he
known then--perhaps he does know now--that he had actually again and
again walked, as it were, round and round the true theory of the
circulation of the blood, and yet never seen it; that that discovery
which, once made, is intelligible, as far as any phenomenon is
intelligible, to the merest peasant, was reserved for another
century, and for one of those Englishmen on whom Vesalius would have
looked as semi-barbarians.
To make a long story short: three years after the publication of
his famous book, "De Corporis Humani Fabrica," he left Venice to
cure Charles V., at Regensburg, and became one of the great
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: luxury of physically torturing them. There is a Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children which has effectually made an end of
our belief that mothers are any more to be trusted than stepmothers,
or fathers than slave-drivers. And there is a growing body of law
designed to prevent parents from using their children ruthlessly to
make money for the household. Such legislation has always been
furiously resisted by the parents, even when the horrors of factory
slavery were at their worst; and the extension of such legislation at
present would be impossible if it were not that the parents affected
by it cannot control a majority of votes in Parliament. In domestic
life a great deal of service is done by children, the girls acting as
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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 Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: new plane of understanding, though his mind seemed to him clear and,
indeed, happily tranquil.
A desire for movement and exploration seized him: he rose and turned
into the black gash of street to his right. For a time the high wall
formed one of its boundaries; but further on, two rows of black-
windowed houses closed it in.
Here was the city's quarter once given over to the Spaniard. Here were
still his forbidding abodes of concrete and adobe, standing cold and
indomitable against the century. From the murky fissure, the eye saw,
flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of his Moorish balconies.
Through stone archways breaths of dead, vault-chilled air coughed upon
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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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: "But I MUST go," replied the brother-in-law. "Don't dry to hinder
me. You are annoying me greatly."
"Rubbish! We are going to play a game of banker."
"No, no. You must play it without me, my friend. My wife is expecting
me at home, and I must go and tell her all about the fair. Yes, I
MUST go if I am to please her. Do not try to detain me."
"Your wife be--! But have you REALLY an important piece of business
with her?"
"No, no, my friend. The real reason is that she is a good and trustful
woman, and that she does a great deal for me. The tears spring to my
eyes as I think of it. Do not detain me. As an honourable man I say
Dead Souls |
