| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: "It grew oppressively hot in the hut, and I
went out into the air to cool myself. Night had
fallen upon the mountains, and a mist was
beginning to creep along the gorges.
"It occurred to me to pop in under the shed
where our horses were standing, to see whether
they had their fodder; and, besides, it is never
any harm to take precautions. My horse was
a splendid one too, and more than one Kabardian
had already cast fond glances at it, repeating at
the same time: 'Yakshi tkhe chok yakshi.'[1]
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: on it; whether it was a sponge, or a zoophyte, or something else;
at one time even whether it was natural, or artificial and a make-
up, - could not be settled, even till a year or two since. But the
discovery of the same, or a similar, species in abundance from the
Butt of the Lows down to Setubal on the Portuguese coast, where the
deep-water shark fishers call it "sea-whip," has given our savants
specimens enough to make up their minds - that they really know
little or nothing about it, and probably will never know.
And do not forget, lastly, to ask, whether at Liverpool or at the
British Museum, for the Holtenias and their congeners, - hollow
sponges built up of glassy spicules, and rooted in the mud by glass
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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 Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: coarse and lawless fancies of our age have taken a freer range.
There are people in Europe who, confounding together the
different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and
woman beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both
the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to
both the same rights; they would mix them in all things - their
occupations, their pleasures, their business. It may readily be
conceived, that by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the
other, both are degraded; and from so preposterous a medley of
the works of nature nothing could ever result but weak men and
disorderly women. It is not thus that the Americans understand
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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 Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: speaking to the poor lad; softly he walked in rainy weather to fetch
him from his reverie in his crevice to the house. He put his pride
into filling the mother's place, so that her child might find, if not
her love, at least the same attentions. This pity resembled
tenderness. Etienne bore, without complaint or resistance, these
attentions of the old retainer, but too many links were now broken
between the hated child and other creatures to admit of any keen
affection at present in his heart. Mechanically he allowed himself to
be protected; he became, as it were, an intermediary creature between
man and plant, or, perhaps one might say, between man and God. To what
shall we compare a being to whom all social laws, all the false
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