| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: to get out of bed at a decent hour--much less see to it
that I had a chair if you were going to have one."
"Upon my word, I can't tell how ashamed and sorry I am,"
Lord Plowden assured him, with fervent contrition in
his voice.
"Well, those are the things to guard against,"
said Thorpe, approaching a dismissal of the subject.
"People who show consideration for me; people who take
pains to do the little pleasant things for me, and see
that I'm not annoyed and worried by trifles--they're
the people that I, on my side, do the big things for.
The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: into words and utter it. "It comes. It surely comes. To-morrow I
begin. I will do no work that goes not Godward. Always now it
shall be the truth as near as I can put it. Always now it shall
be the service of the commonweal as well as I can do it. I will
live for the ending of all false kingship and priestcraft, for
the eternal growth of the spirit of man...."
He was, he knew clearly, only one common soldier in a great
army that was finding its way to enlistment round and about the
earth. He was not alone. While the kings of this world fought for
dominion these others gathered and found themselves and one
another, these others of the faith that grows plain, these men
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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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: broad, and eight cubits high or thick, which, reckoning each cubit
at two feet and a half of our measure (as the learned agree to do),
was one hundred feet long, thirty-five feet broad, and twenty feet
thick?
These stones at Stonehenge, as Mr. Camden describes them, and in
which others agree, were very large, though not so large--the
upright stones twenty-four feet high, seven feet broad, sixteen
feet round, and weigh twelve tons each; and the cross-stones on the
top, which he calls coronets, were six or seven tons. But this
does not seem equal; for if the cross-stones weighed six or seven
tons, the others, as they appear now, were at least five or six
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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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: With the wild Malays of the interior of Malacca, and with the Bugis
(true Malays, though speaking a different, language), Mr. Geach has
often seen this gesture. I presume that it is complete, as, in answer
to my query descriptive of the movements of the shoulders, arms, hands,
and face, Mr. Geach remarks, "it is performed in a beautiful style."
I have lost an extract from a scientific voyage, in which shrugging
the shoulders by some natives (Micronesians) of the Caroline Archipelago
in the Pacific Ocean, was well described. Capt. Speedy informs me
that the Abyssinians shrug their shoulders but enters into no details.
Mrs. Asa Gray saw an Arab dragoman in Alexandria acting exactly
as described in my query, when an old gentleman, on whom he attended,
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
