| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: extremely fast, when suddenly out of an archway ran a child right
between his legs. It fell on the pavement, he tripped over it, and
trampled upon it. Being of course very much frightened and a
little hurt, it began to scream, and in a few seconds the whole
street was full of rough people who came pouring out of the houses
like ants. They surrounded him, and asked him his name. He was
just about to give it when he suddenly remembered the opening
incident in Mr. Stevenson's story. He was so filled with horror at
having realised in his own person that terrible and well-written
scene, and at having done accidentally, though in fact, what the
Mr. Hyde of fiction had done with deliberate intent, that he ran
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: "Ah! I am much too stout," groaned he aloud, while fixed as in a vice. "I had
thought the head was the most difficult part of the matter--oh! oh! I really
cannot squeeze myself through!"
He now wanted to pull his over-hasty head back again, but he could not. For
his neck there was room enough, but for nothing more. His first feeling was of
anger; his next that his temper fell to zero. The Shoes of Fortune had placed
him in the most dreadful situation; and, unfortunately, it never occurred to
him to wish himself free. The pitch-black clouds poured down their contents in
still heavier torrents; not a creature was to be seen in the streets. To reach
up to the bell was what he did not like; to cry aloud for help would have
availed him little; besides, how ashamed would he have been to be found caught
Fairy Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: brilliant plumage flies to Paris. The provincial woman, inferior in
herself, is also inferior through her husband. How is she to live
happy under this crushing twofold consciousness?
But there is a third and terrible element besides her congenital and
conjugal inferiority which contributes to make the figure arid and
gloomy; to reduce it, narrow it, distort it fatally. Is not one of the
most flattering unctions a woman can lay to her soul the assurance of
being something in the existence of a superior man, chosen by herself,
wittingly, as if to have some revenge on marriage, wherein her tastes
were so little consulted? But if in the country the husbands are
inferior beings, the bachelors are no less so. When a provincial wife
The Muse of the Department |
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 The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: sense a copula, but an ordinary intransitive verb, referring to a
natural state, and not to a logical condition, is evident in two
ways. In the first place, it is never used to predicate a quality
directly. A Japanese does not say, "The scenery is fine," but
simply, "Scenery, fine." Secondly, wherever this verb is indirectly
employed in such a manner, it is followed, not by an adjective, but
by an adverb. Not "She is beautiful, but "She exists beautifully,"
would be the Japanese way of expressing his admiration. What looks
at first, therefore, like a copula turns out to be merely an
impersonal intransitive verb.
A negative noun is, of course, an impossibility in any language,
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