| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: the egg furnishes it; but soon, if the stomach is not kept
supplied, the centre of energy becomes extinct and the bird dies.
How would the chick fare if it were expected, for seven or eight
months without stopping, to stand on its feet, to run about, to
flee in the face of danger? Where would it stow the necessary
reserves for such an amount of work?
The little Spider, in her turn, is a minute particle of no size at
all. Where could she store enough fuel to keep up mobility during
so long a period? The imagination shrinks in dismay before the
thought of an atom endowed with inexhaustible motive oils.
We must needs, therefore, appeal to the immaterial, in particular
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: criers. She pulled on her old violet coloured mackintosh, and slipped
out of the house at the side door.
The drizzle of rain was like a veil over the world, mysterious, hushed,
not cold. She got very warm as she hurried across the park. She had to
open her light waterproof.
The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of rain,
full of the mystery of eggs and half-open buds, half unsheathed
flowers. In the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark as if
they had unclothed themselves, and the green things on earth seemed to
hum with greenness.
There was still no one at the clearing. The chicks had nearly all gone
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: freedman to be beaten by a citizen, it would frequently happen that an
Athenian might be mistaken for a slave or an alien and receive a
beating; since the Athenian People is no better clothed than the slave
or alien, nor in personal appearance is there any superiority. Or if
the fact itself that slaves in Athens are allowed to indulge in
luxury, and indeed in some cases to live magnificently, be found
astonishing, this too, it can be shown, is done of set purpose. Where
you have a naval power[22] dependent upon wealth[23] we must perforce
be slaves to our slaves, in order that we may get in our slave-
rents,[24] and let the real slave go free. Where you have wealthy
slaves it ceases to be advantageous that my slave should stand in awe
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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 Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: husband's career.
She was the only child of an old servant of Louis XVIII., a valet who
had followed his master in his wanderings in Italy, Courland, and
England, till after the Restoration the King awarded him with the one
place that he could fill at Court, and made him usher by rotation to
the royal cabinet. So in Amelie's home there had been, as it were, a
sort of reflection of the Court. Thirion used to tell her about the
lords, and ministers, and great men whom he announced and introduced
and saw passing to and fro. The girl, brought up at the gates of the
Tuileries, had caught some tincture of the maxims practised there, and
adopted the dogma of passive obedience to authority. She had sagely
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