| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran: gods besides God to be their glory. Not so! They shall deny their
worship and shall be opponents of theirs!
Dost thou not see that we have sent the devils against the
misbelievers, to drive them on to sin? but, be not thou hasty with
them. Verily, we will number them a number (of days),-the day when
we will gather the pious to the Merciful as ambassadors, and we will
drive the sinners to hell like (herds) to water! They shall not
possess intercession, save he who has taken a compact with the
Merciful.
They say, 'The Merciful has taken to Himself a son:'-ye have brought
a monstrous thing! The heavens well-nigh burst asunder thereat, and
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: time, which debarred him from pursuing the one as single-heartedly
or as far as did the chief.
Snettishane calmly continued calling the roster of eligible
maidens, which, name by name, as fast as uttered, were stamped
ineligible by John Fox, with specified objections appended. Again
he gave it up and started to return to the Fort. Snettishane
watched him go, making no effort to stop him, but seeing him, in
the end, stop himself.
"Come to think of it," the Factor remarked, "we both of us forgot
Lit-lit. Now I wonder if she'll suit me?"
Snettishane met the suggestion with a mirthless face, behind the
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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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: has laid by in England here.
Water? But water is too simple a thing to have dug out all this
great glen.
My dear child, the most wonderful part of Madam How's work is,
that she does such great things and so many different things, with
one and the same tool, which looks to you so simple, though it
really is not so. Water, for instance, is not a simple thing, but
most complicated; and we might spend hours in talking about water,
without having come to the end of its wonders. Still Madam How is
a great economist, and never wastes her materials. She is like
the sailor who boasted (only she never boasts) that, if he had but
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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 The Death of the Lion by Henry James: celerity, I walked out and posted my little packet before luncheon.
Once my paper was written I was free to stay on, and if it was
calculated to divert attention from my levity in so doing I could
reflect with satisfaction that I had never been so clever. I don't
mean to deny of course that I was aware it was much too good for
Mr. Pinhorn; but I was equally conscious that Mr. Pinhorn had the
supreme shrewdness of recognising from time to time the cases in
which an article was not too bad only because it was too good.
There was nothing he loved so much as to print on the right
occasion a thing he hated. I had begun my visit to the great man
on a Monday, and on the Wednesday his book came out. A copy of it
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