| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself
to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine
like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away
all my appetite for the other members of her family."
"And do you fancy, General Vandeleur," retorted Charlie, "that
because my sister has had the misfortune to marry you, she there
and then forfeited her rights and privileges as a lady? I own,
sir, that by that action she did as much as anybody could to
derogate from her position; but to me she is still a Pendragon. I
make it my business to protect her from ungentlemanly outrage, and
if you were ten times her husband I would not permit her liberty to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: north there beyond the Rio Gila. I've seen it. A
prospecting engineer in Mazatlan took me along
with him to help look after the waggons. A
sailor's a handy chap to have about you anyhow.
It's all a desert: cracks in the earth that you can't
see the bottom of; and mountains--sheer rocks
standing up high like walls and church spires, only
a hundred times bigger. The valleys are full of
boulders and black stones. There's not a blade of
grass to see; and the sun sets more red over that
country than I have seen it anywhere--blood-red
To-morrow |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: did not our previous argument show--?
PHAEDRUS: Show what?
SOCRATES: That whether Lysias or any other writer that ever was or will
be, whether private man or statesman, proposes laws and so becomes the
author of a political treatise, fancying that there is any great certainty
and clearness in his performance, the fact of his so writing is only a
disgrace to him, whatever men may say. For not to know the nature of
justice and injustice, and good and evil, and not to be able to distinguish
the dream from the reality, cannot in truth be otherwise than disgraceful
to him, even though he have the applause of the whole world.
PHAEDRUS: Certainly.
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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 Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: As a matter of fact, apart from the differences of
nomenclature, it is evident that the partial discrepancies in this
anthropological classification of criminals are due in some
measure to the different points of view taken by observers. For
instance, the classification of Lacassagne, Joly, Krauss, Badik,
and Marro rest upon a purely descriptive criterion of the organic
or psychological characteristics of criminals. The
classifications of Liszt, Medem, and Minzloff, on the other hand,
depend solely upon the curative and defensive influence of
punishment; and those of Foehring and Starke upon certain special
points of view, such as the assistance of released prisoners, on
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