| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: to treat those who came in answer to the summons.
But when it comes to a case of real hospitality
or helpfulness, your cowboy is there every time.
You are welcome to food and shelter without price,
whether he is at home or not. Only it is etiquette to
leave your name and thanks pinned somewhere about
the place. Otherwise your intrusion may be
considered in the light of a theft, and you may be
pursued accordingly.
Contrary to general opinion, the cowboy is not
a dangerous man to those not looking for trouble.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: history--the burning of the temple of Ephesus.
Among the inadequate attempts to account for the
assassination we must concede high rank to the many which have
described it as a "peculiarly brutal crime" and then added that
it was "ordained from above." I think this verdict will not be
popular "above." If the deed was ordained from above, there is
no rational way of making this prisoner even partially
responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him
without manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by
disregarding its laws even the most pious and showy theologian
may be beguiled into preferring charges which should not be
What is Man? |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: tracks which have conducted me to considerations and maxims, of which I
have formed a method that gives me the means, as I think, of gradually
augmenting my knowledge, and of raising it by little and little to the
highest point which the mediocrity of my talents and the brief duration of
my life will permit me to reach. For I have already reaped from it such
fruits that, although I have been accustomed to think lowly enough of
myself, and although when I look with the eye of a philosopher at the
varied courses and pursuits of mankind at large, I find scarcely one which
does not appear in vain and useless, I nevertheless derive the highest
satisfaction from the progress I conceive myself to have already made in
the search after truth, and cannot help entertaining such expectations of
Reason Discourse |
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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: honours, in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy country.--'Tis quite
surrounded, said my uncle Toby, with the Shannon, and is, by its situation,
one of the strongest fortified places in Ireland.--
I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr. Slop, of beginning a medical
lecture.--'Tis all true, answered Trim.--Then I wish the faculty would
follow the cut of it, said Yorick.--'Tis all cut through, an' please your
reverence, said the corporal, with drains and bogs; and besides, there was
such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole country was like a
puddle,--'twas that, and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which
had like to have killed both his honour and myself; now there was no such
thing, after the first ten days, continued the corporal, for a soldier to
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