| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: and her mother and Case, all which would be very tedious, and fill
sheets if I set it down in Beach de Mar, but which I must give a
hint of in plain English, and one thing about myself which had a
very big effect on my concerns, as you are soon to hear.
It seems she was born in one of the Line Islands; had been only two
or three years in these parts, where she had come with a white man,
who was married to her mother and then died; and only the one year
in Falesa. Before that they had been a good deal on the move,
trekking about after the white man, who was one of those rolling
stones that keep going round after a soft job. They talk about
looking for gold at the end of a rainbow; but if a man wants an
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: for music, it was his profession, and where will you find the man who
is in love with his means of earning a livelihood? For it is with a
profession as with marriage: in the long length you are sensible of
nothing but the drawbacks.
Brillat-Savarin has deliberately set himself to justify the
gastronome, but perhaps even he has not dwelt sufficiently on the
reality of the pleasures of the table. The demands of digestion upon
the human economy produce an internal wrestling-bout of human forces
which rivals the highest degree of amorous pleasure. The gastronome is
conscious of an expenditure of vital power, an expenditure so vast
that the brain is atrophied (as it were), that a second brain, located
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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 A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: and we came away. But he was very wroth.
"The whole way from the Rue de la Victoire to the boulevard a perfect
torrent of venomous words poured from his mouth like a waterfall in
flood; but as the shocking language which he used on occasion was
quite unfit to print, the report is necessarily inadequate.
" 'My dear fellow, I will leave that vile, shameless opera dancer, a
worn-out jade that has been set spinning like a top to every operatic
air; a foul hussy, an organ-grinder's monkey! Oh, my dear boy, you
have taken up with an actress; may the notion of marrying your
mistress never get a hold on you. It is a torment omitted from the
hell of Dante, you see. Look here! I will beat her; I will give her a
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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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: stated to the contrary,[19] I should have imagined that these gestures
might have been acquired or learnt by her, considering her wonderful
sense of touch and appreciation of the movements of others.
With microcephalous idiots, who are so degraded that they never learn
to speak, one of them is described by Vogt,[20] as answering, when asked
whether he wished for more food or drink, by inclining or shaking his head.
Schmalz, in his remarkable dissertation on the education of the deaf
and dumb, as well as of children raised only one degree above idiotcy,
assumes that they can always both make and understand the common signs
of affirmation and negation."
Nevertheless if we look to the various races of man, these signs are
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
