| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: the city like far-off thunder. The mill to which she was going
lay on the river, a mile below the city-limits. It was far, and
she was weak, aching from standing twelve hours at the spools.
Yet it was her almost nightly walk to take this man his supper,
though at every square she sat down to rest, and she knew she
should receive small word of thanks.
Perhaps, if she had possessed an artist's eye, the picturesque
oddity of the scene might have made her step stagger less, and
the path seem shorter; but to her the mills were only "summat
deilish to look at by night."
The road leading to the mills had been quarried from the solid
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: which heir, but little loved by the good man, remained in the country,
where he was a shepherd, near Nanterre.
The guardian of beasts, an ordinary peasant, came to town by the
advice of his two cousins, who placed him in their uncle's house, in
the hope that, as much by his silly tricks and his clumsiness, his
want of brain, and his ignorance, he would be displeasing to the
canon, who would kick him out of his will. Now this poor Chiquon, as
the shepherd was named, had lived about a month alone with his old
uncle, and finding more profit or more amusement in minding an abbot
than looking after sheep, made himself the canon's dog, his servant,
the staff of his old age, saying, "God keep you," when he passed wind,
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: lion then, and it frightens me! Do you know, I fancy
you would be a match for any man when you are in one
O' your takings."
"Never! do you?" said Bathsheba, slightly laughing,
though somewhat seriously alarmed by this Amazonian
picture of herself. "I hope I am not a bold sort of
maid -- mannish?" she continued with some anxiety.
"O no, not mannish; but so almighty womanish
that 'tis getting on that way sometimes. Ah! miss." she
said, after having drawn her breath very sadly in and
sent it very sadly out, "I wish I had half your failing
Far From the Madding Crowd |
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 Theaetetus by Plato: And many arguments are used to show, that motion is the source of life, and
rest of death: fire and warmth are produced by friction, and living
creatures owe their origin to a similar cause; the bodily frame is
preserved by exercise and destroyed by indolence; and if the sun ceased to
move, "chaos would come again." Now apply this doctrine of "All is motion"
to the senses, and first of all to the sense of sight. The colour of
white, or any other colour, is neither in the eyes nor out of them, but
ever in motion between the object and the eye, and varying in the case of
every percipient. All is relative, and, as the followers of Protagoras
remark, endless contradictions arise when we deny this; e.g. here are six
dice; they are more than four and less than twelve; "more and also less,"
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