| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: The Memorabilia 4
The Symposium 1
The Economist 1
On Horsemanship 1
The Sportsman 1
The Cavalry General 1
The Apology 1
On Revenues 1
The Hiero 1
The Agesilaus 1
The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians 2
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: was one of the few slaveholders who could and did
work with his hands. He was a hard-working man.
He knew by himself just what a man or a boy could
do. There was no deceiving him. His work went on
in his absence almost as well as in his presence; and
he had the faculty of making us feel that he was
ever present with us. This he did by surprising us.
He seldom approached the spot where we were at
work openly, if he could do it secretly. He always
aimed at taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning,
that we used to call him, among ourselves, "the
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: sensible person on the stage. Thus it comes about that the more
completely the dramatist is emancipated from the illusion that
men and women are primarily reasonable beings, and the more
powerfully he insists on the ruthless indifference of their great
dramatic antagonist, the external world, to their whims and
emotions, the surer he is to be denounced as blind to the very
distinction on which his whole work is built. Far from ignoring
idiosyncrasy, will, passion, impulse, whim, as factors in human
action, I have placed them so nakedly on the stage that the
elderly citizen, accustomed to see them clothed with the veil of
manufactured logic about duty, and to disguise even his own
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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 Falk by Joseph Conrad: grab him by the seat of his inexpressibles. I
begged him to wait till Falk in person had spoken
with him. There remained some small matter to
talk over, as I understood.
He sat down again at once, full of suspicion.
"What matter?" he said surlily. "I have had
enough of his nonsense. There's no matter at all,
as he knows very well; the girl has nothing in the
world. She came to us in one thin dress when my
brother died, and I have a growing family."
"It can't be anything of that kind," I opined.
Falk |
