| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: his rent and provision-bills with bourgeois punctuality.
Having lived all his life in toil and poverty, he had never had the
time to love. Poor and a bachelor, until now he did not desire to
complicate his simple life. Incapable of devising any means of
increasing his little fortune, he carried, every three months, to his
notary, Cardot, his quarterly earnings and economies. When the notary
had received about three thousand francs he invested them in some
first mortgage, the interest of which he drew himself and added to the
quarterly payments made to him by Fougeres. The painter was awaiting
the fortunate moment when his property thus laid by would give him the
imposing income of two thousand francs, to allow himself the otium cum
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: fingers in an artificial covering. "However recklessly the whale may
sometimes serve us," said humorous Stubb one day, "he can never be
truly said to handle us without mittens."
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the
world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait
may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with
any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly
way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And
the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his
living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you
Moby Dick |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: in pairs from the two ends of the cross-piece. The position of the
rotating torsion-head was such that the two tubes were at opposite
sides of, and equidistant from, the magnetic axis, that is to say
from the line joining the two closely approximated polar points of
an electro-magnet. His object was to compare the magnetic action of
the gases in the two tubes. When one tube was filled with oxygen,
and the other with nitrogen, on the supervention of the magnetic
force, the oxygen was pulled towards the axis, the nitrogen being
pushed out. By turning the torsion-head they could be restored to
their primitive position of equidistance, where it is evident the
action of the glass envelopes was annulled. The amount of torsion
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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 First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people
to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode
seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with
the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or
reject propositions originated by others not especially chosen
for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would
wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment
to the Constitution--which amendment, however, I have not seen--has
passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall
never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States,
including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction
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