| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: 'five minutes at the very least!' His heart bumped in his breast with
frightening loudness. Fortunately the piece of work he was engaged on was
mere routine, the rectification of a long list of figures, not needing
close attention.
Whatever was written on the paper, it must have some kind of political
meaning. So far as he could see there were two possibilities. One, much
the more likely, was that the girl was an agent of the Thought Police,
just as he had feared. He did not know why the Thought Police should
choose to deliver their messages in such a fashion, but perhaps they had
their reasons. The thing that was written on the paper might be a threat, a
summons, an order to commit suicide, a trap of some description. But there
1984 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: rights when misfortunes overtook him. I plead now for you, for them,
for their children, for every one."
"The old fellow makes a lot of smoke with his cannon," thought Maitre
Solonet, giving his client a look, which meant, "Keep on!"
"There is one way of combining all interests," replied Madame
Evangelista, calmly. "I can reserve to myself only the necessary cost
of living in a convent, and my children can have my property at once.
I can renounce the world, if such anticipated death conduces to the
welfare of my daughter."
"Madame," said the old notary, "let us take time to consider and
weigh, deliberately, the course we had best pursue to conciliate all
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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 Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: and commerce it forms between one nation and another; to
what a distance it travels, and from how vast a territory
it drains the great body of fresh water which flows past
your feet.
For many leagues north and south of San Nicolas and
Rozario, the country is really level. Scarcely anything which
travellers have written about its extreme flatness, can be
considered as exaggeration. Yet I could never find a spot
where, by slowly turning round, objects were not seen at
greater distances in some directions than in others; and
this manifestly proves inequality in the plain. At sea, a
The Voyage of the Beagle |
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 Mountains by Stewart Edward White: growth, even saplings of the same species lacked
entirely, so that we proceeded in the clear open aisles
of a tremendous and spacious magnificence.
This very lack of the smaller and usual growths,
the generous plan of spacing, and the size of the trees
themselves necessarily deprived us of a standard
of comparison. At first the forest seemed immense.
But after a little our eyes became accustomed to its
proportions. We referred it back to the measures of
long experience. The trees, the wood-aisles, the
extent of vision shrunk to the normal proportions of an
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