| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: lacking in a sense of its wider interests, an instinct which
might have supplied the deficiency. They stood nice about M. de
Talleyrand's marriage, when M. de Talleyrand was the one man
among them with the steel-encompassed brains that can forge a new
political system and begin a new career of glory for a nation.
The Faubourg scoffed at a minister if he was not gently born, and
produced no one of gentle birth that was fit to be a minister.
There were plenty of nobles fitted to serve their country by
raising the dignity of justices of the peace, by improving the
land, by opening out roads and canals, and taking an active and
leading part as country gentlemen; but these had sold their
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
United States Declaration of Independence |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: little known groups. She could be descried afar from lonely
headlands, a white speck travelling fast over the blue sea; the
apathetic keepers of rare lighthouses dotting the great highway
to the east came to know the cut of her topsails. They saw her
passing east, passing west. They had faint glimpses of her flying
with masts aslant in the mist of a rain-squall, or could observe
her at leisure, upright and with shivering sails, forging ahead
through a long day of unsteady airs. Men saw her battling with a
heavy monsoon in the Bay of Bengal, lying becalmed in the Java
Sea, or gliding out suddenly from behind a point of land,
graceful and silent in the clear moonlight. Her activity was the
The Rescue |
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 Octopus by Frank Norris: outrage too great to daunt them, no petty larceny too small to
shame them; despoiling a government treasury of a million
dollars, yet picking the pockets of a farm hand of the price of a
loaf of bread.
"They swindle a nation of a hundred million and call it
Financiering; they levy a blackmail and call it Commerce; they
corrupt a legislature and call it Politics; they bribe a judge
and call it Law; they hire blacklegs to carry out their plans and
call it Organisation; they prostitute the honour of a State and
call it Competition.
"And this is America. We fought Lexington to free ourselves; we
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