| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: Minnie was her mother's daughter. Restless, dissatisfied,
emptyheaded, he was the despair of his father. He drove the farm
horses as if they were racers, lashing them up hill and down
dale. He was forever lounging off to the village or wheedling
his mother for money to take him to Commercial. It was before
the day of the ubiquitous automobile. Given one of those present
adjuncts to farm life, John would have ended his career much
earlier. As it was, they found him lying by the roadside at dawn
one morning after the horses had trotted into the yard with the
wreck of the buggy bumping the road behind them. He had stolen
the horses out of the barn after the help was asleep, had led
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: To the house of Signior Baptista Minola?
BIONDELLO.
He that has the two fair daughters; is't he you mean?
TRANIO.
Even he, Biondello!
GREMIO.
Hark you, sir, you mean not her to--
TRANIO.
Perhaps him and her, sir; what have you to do?
PETRUCHIO.
Not her that chides, sir, at any hand, I pray.
The Taming of the Shrew |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: On the other hand, the discovery of abstractions was the great source of
all mental improvement in after ages. It was the pushing aside of the old,
the revelation of the new. But each one of the company of abstractions, if
we may speak in the metaphorical language of Plato, became in turn the
tyrant of the mind, the dominant idea, which would allow no other to have a
share in the throne. This is especially true of the Eleatic philosophy:
while the absoluteness of Being was asserted in every form of language, the
sensible world and all the phenomena of experience were comprehended under
Not-being. Nor was any difficulty or perplexity thus created, so long as
the mind, lost in the contemplation of Being, asked no more questions, and
never thought of applying the categories of Being or Not-being to mind or
|
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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: Favourite, Blachevelle's friend, the one aged three and twenty,
the old one, ran on in front under the great green boughs,
jumped the ditches, stalked distractedly over bushes, and presided
over this merry-making with the spirit of a young female faun.
Zephine and Dahlia, whom chance had made beautiful in such a way
that they set each off when they were together, and completed
each other, never left each other, more from an instinct of coquetry
than from friendship, and clinging to each other, they assumed
English poses; the first keepsakes had just made their appearance,
melancholy was dawning for women, as later on, Byronism dawned for men;
and the hair of the tender sex began to droop dolefully. Zephine and
Les Miserables |
