| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: a dramatic gesture, flinging open his Early English carved oak gate.
"Phew!" said I, and followed him to the door.
"I don't know how many times it goes," he said, with his latch-key
in his hand.
"And you--"
"It throws all sorts of light on nervous physiology, it kicks the theory
of vision into a perfectly new shape! . . . Heaven knows how many
thousand times. We'll try all that after--The thing is to try the stuff
now."
"Try the stuff?" I said, as we went along the passage.
"Rather," said Gibberne, turning on me in his study. "There it is
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: "I certainly think you act wisely in so doing," said the
priest. "Not because I have the least desire to learn
anything you may please to conceal from me, but simply that
if, through your assistance, I could distribute the legacy
according to the wishes of the testator, why, so much the
better, that is all."
"I hope it may be so," replied Caderousse, his face flushed
with cupidity.
"I am all attention," said the abbe.
"Stop a minute," answered Caderousse; "we might be
interrupted in the most interesting part of my story, which
The Count of Monte Cristo |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: individuality in them, no soul. These clocks, and curtains, and,
worst of all, the wallpapers--they're a nightmare. I think of
Vozdvizhenskoe as the promised land. You're not sending the
horses off yet?"
"No, they will come after us. Where are you going to?"
"I wanted to go to Wilson's to take some dresses to her. So it's
really to be to-morrow?" she said in a cheerful voice; but
suddenly her face changed.
Vronsky's valet came in to ask him to sign a receipt for a
telegram from Petersburg. There was nothing out of the way in
Vronsky's getting a telegram, but he said, as though anxious to
Anna Karenina |
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 Alcibiades I by Plato: The motive or leading thought of the dialogue may be detected in Xen. Mem.,
and there is no similar instance of a 'motive' which is taken from Xenophon
in an undoubted dialogue of Plato. On the other hand, the upholders of the
genuineness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a true Socratic
spirit; they will compare the Ion as being akin both in subject and
treatment; they will urge the authority of Aristotle; and they will detect
in the treatment of the Sophist, in the satirical reasoning upon Homer, in
the reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that vice is ignorance, traces of
a Platonic authorship. In reference to the last point we are doubtful, as
in some of the other dialogues, whether the author is asserting or
overthrowing the paradox of Socrates, or merely following the argument
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