| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: my story to Gwendolen.
On the very day after my talk with him I was surprised by the
receipt of a note from Hugh Vereker, to whom our encounter at
Bridges had been recalled, as he mentioned, by his falling, in a
magazine, on some article to which my signature was attached. "I
read it with great pleasure," he wrote, "and remembered under its
influence our lively conversation by your bedroom fire. The
consequence of this has been that I begin to measure the temerity
of my having saddled you with a knowledge that you may find
something of a burden. Now that the fit's over I can't imagine how
I came to be moved so much beyond my wont. I had never before
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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 Alcibiades I by Plato: silver, there is more of them in Lacedaemon than in all the rest of Hellas,
for during many generations gold has been always flowing in to them from
the whole Hellenic world, and often from the barbarian also, and never
going out, as in the fable of Aesop the fox said to the lion, 'The prints
of the feet of those going in are distinct enough;' but who ever saw the
trace of money going out of Lacedaemon? And therefore you may safely infer
that the inhabitants are the richest of the Hellenes in gold and silver,
and that their kings are the richest of them, for they have a larger share
of these things, and they have also a tribute paid to them which is very
considerable. Yet the Spartan wealth, though great in comparison of the
wealth of the other Hellenes, is as nothing in comparison of that of the
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