| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: came to the village gate he saw the big thorn-bush that was drawn
up before the gate at twilight, pushed to one side.
"Umph!" he said, for he had come across more than one such
barricade in his night rambles after things to eat. "So men are
afraid of the People of the Jungle here also." He sat down by the
gate, and when a man came out he stood up, opened his mouth, and
pointed down it to show that he wanted food. The man stared, and
ran back up the one street of the village shouting for the priest,
who was a big, fat man dressed in white, with a red and yellow
mark on his forehead. The priest came to the gate, and with him
at least a hundred people, who stared and talked and shouted and
The Jungle Book |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: and as for me, my blood was up.
"Break the lock," I suggested, and Hotchkiss, standing at the side,
out of range, retaliated for every bullet by a smashing blow with
the tongs. The shots ceased after a half dozen, and the door was
giving, slowly. One of us on each side of the door, we were ready
for almost any kind of desperate resistance. As it swung open
Hotchkiss poised the tongs; I stood, bent forward, my arm drawn
back for a blow.
Nothing happened.
There was not a sound. Finally, at the risk of losing an eye which
I justly value, I peered around and into the room. There was no
The Man in Lower Ten |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: are types in nature, and that other things partake of them by becoming like
them.' 'But to become like them is to be comprehended in the same idea;
and the likeness of the idea and the individuals implies another idea of
likeness, and another without end.' 'Quite true.' 'The theory, then, of
participation by likeness has to be given up. You have hardly yet,
Socrates, found out the real difficulty of maintaining abstract ideas.'
'What difficulty?' 'The greatest of all perhaps is this: an opponent will
argue that the ideas are not within the range of human knowledge; and you
cannot disprove the assertion without a long and laborious demonstration,
which he may be unable or unwilling to follow. In the first place, neither
you nor any one who maintains the existence of absolute ideas will affirm
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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 Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: know not how) with humanity, and put on inherited looks, and turn
its head with the manner of one ascendant, and offer its hand with
the gesture of another, are wonders dulled for us by repetition.
But in the singular unity of look, in the common features and
common bearing, of all these painted generations on the walls of
the residencia, the miracle started out and looked me in the face.
And an ancient mirror falling opportunely in my way, I stood and
read my own features a long while, tracing out on either hand the
filaments of descent and the bonds that knit me with my family.
At last, in the course of these investigations, I opened the door
of a chamber that bore the marks of habitation. It was of large
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