| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: hands and then the other.
"Pavel Konstantinovitch," he said in an imploring voice, "don't
be calm and contented, don't let yourself be put to sleep! While
you are young, strong, confident, be not weary in well-doing!
There is no happiness, and there ought not to be; but if there is
a meaning and an object in life, that meaning and object is not
our happiness, but something greater and more rational. Do good!"
And all this Ivan Ivanovitch said with a pitiful, imploring
smile, as though he were asking him a personal favour.
Then all three sat in arm-chairs at different ends of the
drawing-room and were silent. Ivan Ivanovitch's story had not
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: thronged her little parlour from morning to night, not one now
remains alive but myself, who, afflicted by early infirmity, was
one of the most delicate of her nurslings, yet, nevertheless,
have outlived them all.
It is still my custom, and shall be so while I have the use of my
limbs, to visit my respected relation at least three times a
week. Her abode is about half a mile from the suburbs of the
town in which I reside, and is accessible, not only by the
highroad, from which it stands at some distance, but by means of
a greensward footpath leading through some pretty meadows. I
have so little left to torment me in life, that it is one of my
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: which we must work out ought to be promptitude. We must act on
the military principles of judgment, promptitude, and energy."
"Yes, promptitude . . ." repeated Ivan Ivanitch in a drowsy and
listless voice, as though he were dropping asleep. "Only one
can't do anything. The crops have failed, and so what's the use
of all your judgment and energy? . . . It's the elements. . . .
You can't go against God and fate."
"Yes, but that's what man has a head for, to conten d against the
elements."
"Eh? Yes . . . that's so, to be sure. . . . Yes."
Ivan Ivanitch sneezed into his handkerchief, brightened up, and
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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: before you can make the examination. Is that clear?"
"You will stay, monsieur," said the Duchess. "The public prosecutor is
coming, I hope, in time."
"When the public prosecutor arrives," little Mme. Camusot said, with
some heat, "he must find all over.--Yes, my dear, yes," she added,
looking full at her amazed husband.--"Ah! old hypocrite of a
President, you are setting your wits against us; you shall remember
it! You have a mind to help us to a dish of your own making, you shall
have two served up to you by your humble servant Cecile Amelie
Thirion!--Poor old Blondet! It is lucky for him that the President has
taken this journey to turn us out, for now that great oaf of a Joseph
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