| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: that Charley possessed; on his influence in the business world, which
enabled him to walk into the V-C Chemical Company's office and borrow an
expert in the phosphate line; on his launch in which to pop the expert
and take him up the river, and see in his company and learn from his lips
just what resources of worldly wealth were likely to be in-store for
John Mayrant; and finally (which was the key to all the rest) on his
inveterate passion for her, on his banker-like determination through all
the thick and thin of discouragement, and worse than discouragement, of
contemptuous coquetry, to possess her at any cost he could afford;--to
use all this that Charley had, in order that she might judiciously arrive
at the decision whether she would take him or his rival, left one lost in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: believe that all these facts can be explained, as follows, on the view of
descent with modification.
It is commonly assumed, perhaps from monstrosities often affecting the
embryo at a very early period, that slight variations necessarily appear at
an equally early period. But we have little evidence on this head--indeed
the evidence rather points the other way; for it is notorious that breeders
of cattle, horses, and various fancy animals, cannot positively tell, until
some time after the animal has been born, what its merits or form will
ultimately turn out. We see this plainly in our own children; we cannot
always tell whether the child will be tall or short, or what its precise
features will be. The question is not, at what period of life any
On the Origin of Species |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: all sit down, the hanger-back not least. But the average sermon
flees the point, disporting itself in that eternity of which we
know, and need to know, so little; avoiding the bright, crowded,
and momentous fields of life where destiny awaits us. Upon the
average book a writer may be silent; he may set it down to his ill-
hap that when his own youth was in the acrid fermentation, he
should have fallen and fed upon the cheerless fields of Obermann.
Yet to Mr. Arnold, who led him to these pastures, he still bears a
grudge. The day is perhaps not far oft when people will begin to
count MOLL FLANDERS, ay, or THE COUNTRY WIFE, more wholesome and
more pious diet than these guide-books to consistent egoism.
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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 Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: The transient and fortuitous association of these two had about it a
certain air of mystery. On hearing the names announced of Monsieur de
Soulanges and the Comtesse de Vaudremont, a few women sitting by the
wall rose, and men, hurrying in from the side-rooms, pressed forward
to the principal doorway. One of the jesters who are always to be
found in any large assembly said, as the Countess and her escort came
in, that "women had quite as much curiosity about seeing a man who was
faithful to his passion as men had in studying a woman who was
difficult to enthrall."
Though the Comte de Soulanges, a young man of about two-and-thirty,
was endowed with the nervous temperament which in a man gives rise to
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