| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: and consequently was innocent of ungraceful eagerness.
His tranquil unsuspectingness of the relativity of his own place
in the social scale was probably irritating to M. de Bellegarde,
who saw himself reflected in the mind of his potential brother-in-law
in a crude and colorless form, unpleasantly dissimilar to the
impressive image projected upon his own intellectual mirror.
He never forgot himself for an instant, and replied to what he must
have considered Newman's "advances" with mechanical politeness.
Newman, who was constantly forgetting himself, and indulging
in an unlimited amount of irresponsible inquiry and conjecture,
now and then found himself confronted by the conscious,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: which were at first performed consciously, have become
through habit and association converted into reflex actions,
and are now so firmly fixed and inherited, that they
are performed, even when not of the least use,[14] as often
as the same causes arise, which originally excited them in us
through the volition. In such cases the sensory nerve-cells
excite the motor cells, without first communicating with
those cells on which our consciousness and volition depend.
It is probable that sneezing and coughing were originally
acquired by the habit of expelling, as violently as possible,
any irritating particle from the sensitive air-passages. As far
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: him.
And when he reached the great portal of the cathedral, the soldiers
thrust their halberts out and said, 'What dost thou seek here?
None enters by this door but the King.'
And his face flushed with anger, and he said to them, 'I am the
King,' and waved their halberts aside and passed in.
And when the old Bishop saw him coming in his goatherd's dress, he
rose up in wonder from his throne, and went to meet him, and said
to him, 'My son, is this a king's apparel? And with what crown
shall I crown thee, and what sceptre shall I place in thy hand?
Surely this should be to thee a day of joy, and not a day of
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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 Gorgias by Plato: way states and individuals should seek to attain harmony, which, as the
wise tell us, is the bond of heaven and earth, of gods and men. Callicles
has never discovered the power of geometrical proportion in both worlds; he
would have men aim at disproportion and excess. But if he be wrong in
this, and if self-control is the true secret of happiness, then the paradox
is true that the only use of rhetoric is in self-accusation, and Polus was
right in saying that to do wrong is worse than to suffer wrong, and Gorgias
was right in saying that the rhetorician must be a just man. And you were
wrong in taunting me with my defenceless condition, and in saying that I
might be accused or put to death or boxed on the ears with impunity. For I
may repeat once more, that to strike is worse than to be stricken--to do
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