| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: a train which pulls up the middle of the street (it killed two
people the day before yesterday, being un-braked and driven
absolutely regardless of consequences), and you pull up somewhere
at the back of the city on the Pacific beach. Originally the
cliffs and their approaches must have been pretty, but they have
been so carefully defiled with advertisements that they are now
one big blistered abomination. A hundred yards from the shore
stood a big rock covered with the carcasses of the sleek
sea-beasts, who roared and rolled and walloped in the spouting
surges. No bold man had painted the creatures sky-blue or
advertised news-papers on their backs, wherefore they did 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 Theaetetus by Plato: SOCRATES: But can you certainly determine by any other means which of
these opinions is true?
THEAETETUS: I do not think that I can.
SOCRATES: Listen, then, to a statement of the other side of the argument,
which is made by the champions of appearance. They would say, as I
imagine--Can that which is wholly other than something, have the same
quality as that from which it differs? and observe, Theaetetus, that the
word 'other' means not 'partially,' but 'wholly other.'
THEAETETUS: Certainly, putting the question as you do, that which is
wholly other cannot either potentially or in any other way be the same.
SOCRATES: And must therefore be admitted to be unlike?
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: was certainly in his thoughts. 'How the magnetic force,' he writes,
'is transferred through bodies or through space we know not; whether
the result is merely action at a distance, as in the case of gravity;
or by some intermediate agency, as in the case of light, heat,
the electric current, and (as I believe) static electric action.
The idea of magnetic fluids, as applied by some, or of Magnetic centres
of action, does not include that of the latter kind of transmission,
but the idea of lines of force does.' And he continues thus:--
'I am more inclined to the notion that in the transmission of the
[magnetic] force there is such an action [an intermediate agency]
external to the magnet, than that the effects are merely attraction
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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 Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: I am trying to write with my left.
SUNDAY.
About half-past eight last night, I had gone to my own room,
Fanny and Lloyd were in Fanny's, every one else in bed, only
two boys on the premises - the two little brown boys Mitaiele
(Michael), age I suppose 11 or 12, and the new steward, a
Wallis islander, speaking no English and about fifty words of
Samoan, recently promoted from the bush work, and a most
good, anxious, timid lad of 15 or 16 - looks like 17 or 18,
of course - they grow fast here. In comes Mitaiele to Lloyd,
and told some rigmarole about Paatalise (the steward's name)
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