| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: regarded sometimes as in process of transition, sometimes as alternatives
or opposites: (8) There are no degrees or kinds of sameness, likeness,
difference, nor any adequate conception of motion or change: (9) One,
being, time, like space in Zeno's puzzle of Achilles and the tortoise, are
regarded sometimes as continuous and sometimes as discrete: (10) In some
parts of the argument the abstraction is so rarefied as to become not only
fallacious, but almost unintelligible, e.g. in the contradiction which is
elicited out of the relative terms older and younger: (11) The relation
between two terms is regarded under contradictory aspects, as for example
when the existence of the one and the non-existence of the one are equally
assumed to involve the existence of the many: (12) Words are used through
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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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will
cease to exist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against
property, though such are the crimes that the English law, valuing
what a man has more than what a man is, punishes with the harshest
and most horrible severity, if we except the crime of murder, and
regard death as worse than penal servitude, a point on which our
criminals, I believe, disagree. But though a crime may not be
against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and
depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and
so, when that system is abolished, will disappear. When each
member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not
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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 Paradise Lost by John Milton: Ill-worthy I such title should belong
To me transgressour; who, for thee ordained
A help, became thy snare; to me reproach
Rather belongs, distrust, and all dispraise:
But infinite in pardon was my Judge,
That I, who first brought death on all, am graced
The source of life; next favourable thou,
Who highly thus to entitle me vouchsaf'st,
Far other name deserving. But the field
To labour calls us, now with sweat imposed,
Though after sleepless night; for see!the morn,
Paradise Lost |
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 Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: He gave the fan such a twirl that its slender sticks snapped, and
it dropped like the broken wing of a bird.
"Mr. Uxbridge, that fan belongs to Mrs. Bliss."
He threw it out of the window.
"You have courage, fidelity, and patience--this character with
a passionate soul. I am sure that you have such a soul?"
"I do not know."
"I have fallen in love with you. It happened on the very day when
I passed you on the way to the Glen. I never got away from the
remembrance of seeing your hand on the mane of my horse."
He waited for me to speak, but I could not; the balance of my
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