| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: his most solemn prudences and most placid jests, to which every
opening led for return and revision and in which every little
flower of a foretaste was pulled up as soon as planted. He had
announced at the earliest day--characterising the whole business,
from that moment, as their "plans," under which name he handled it
as a Syndicate handles a Chinese or other Loan--he had promptly
declared that the question must be thoroughly studied, and he
produced, on the whole subject, from day to day, an amount of
information that excited her wonder and even, not a little, as she
frankly let him know, her disdain. When she thought of the danger
in which another pair of lovers rapturously lived she enquired of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: and the gloom of the walk home lay not in the night overhead,
but in the thought of her departure.
"Why must you leave Christminster?" he said regretfully.
"How can you do otherwise than cling to a city in whose history
such men as Newman, Pusey, Ward, Keble, loom so large!"
"Yes--they do. Though how large do they loom in the history
of the world? ... What a funny reason for caring to stay!
I should never have thought of it!" She laughed.
"Well--I must go," she continued. "Miss Fontover, one of the partners
whom I serve, is offended with me, and I with her; and it is best to go."
"How did that happen?"
Jude the Obscure |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men.
Secondly. It is an unnecessary thing, which can be omitted
without sin and danger.
Thirdly. The Sacrament can be received in a better and more
blessed way [more acceptable to God], (yea, the only blessed
way), according to the institution of Christ. Why, then, do
they drive the world to woe and [extreme] misery on account of
a fictitious, unnecessary matter, which can be well obtained
in another and more blessed way?
Let [care be taken that] it be publicly preached to the people
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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 The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: by means of which they had effected the destruction of that state of
things; and that, without intending it, they had used its remains to
rebuild the edifice of modern society. This is his thesis, and this
he proves, it seems to me, incontestably by documentary evidence.
Not only does he find habits which we suppose--or supposed till
lately--to have died with the eighteenth century, still living and
working, at least in France, in the nineteenth, but the new opinions
which we look on usually as the special children of the nineteenth
century, he shows to have been born in the eighteenth. France, he
considers, is still at heart what the Ancien Regime made her.
He shows that the hatred of the ruling caste, the intense
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