| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: this and other sources of error, and as it is known that he was
eminently successful in elucidating the physiology of the muscles
of the hand by the aid of electricity, it is probable that he is
generally in the right about the muscles of the face. In my opinion,
Dr. Duchenne has greatly advanced the subject by his treatment of it.
No one has more carefully studied the contraction of each separate muscle,
and the consequent furrows produced on the skin. He has also,
and this is a very important service, shown which muscles are least
under the separate control of the will. He enters very little into
theoretical considerations, and seldom attempts to explain why certain
muscles and not others contract under the influence of certain emotions.
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: "Then the left wing of the monoplane came up like a door that slams,
some wires whistled past my head, and one whipped off my helmet, and
then, with the seat slipping away from me, down we went. I snatched
unavailingly for the helmet, and then gripped the sides. It was
like dropping in a boat suddenly into the trough of a wave--and
going on dropping. We were both strapped, and I got my feet against
the side and clung to the locked second wheel.
"The sensation was as though something like an intermittent electric
current was pouring through me. It's a ridiculous image to use, I
can't justify it, but it was as if I was having cold blue light
squirted through every pore of my being. There was an astonishment,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: or the other one. In the city there are always one, two, or
three celebrities that it is indispensable that one should visit.
Now one must care for himself, or care for such or such a little
one, now it is the professor, the private tutor, the governesses,
. . . and life is absolutely empty. In this activity we were
less conscious of the sufferings of our cohabitation. Moreover,
in the first of it, we had a superb occupation,--the arrangement
of the new dwelling, and then, too, the moving from the city to
the country, and from the country to the city.
"Thus we spent a winter. The following winter an incident
happened to us which passed unnoticed, but which was the
The Kreutzer Sonata |
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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: charity, and exemplary in almost everything he did. What then can
any one say against being very sensible of the value of such a man,
notwithstanding his profession? though it may be my opinion
perhaps, as well as the opinion of others who shall read this, that
he was mistaken.
The first hour that I began to converse with him after he had
agreed to go with me to the East Indies, I found reason to delight
exceedingly in his conversation; and he first began with me about
religion in the most obliging manner imaginable. "Sir," says he,
"you have not only under God" (and at that he crossed his breast)
"saved my life, but you have admitted me to go this voyage in your
Robinson Crusoe |
