| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: positively cannot do this: then there positively must be something
else that you can do, and I want to see you find that out and do
it.' Fleeming would never suffer you to think that you were
living, if there were not, somewhere in your life, some touch of
heroism, to do or to endure.
This was his rarest quality. Far on in middle age, when men begin
to lie down with the bestial goddesses, Comfort and Respectability,
the strings of his nature still sounded as high a note as a young
man's. He loved the harsh voice of duty like a call to battle. He
loved courage, enterprise, brave natures, a brave word, an ugly
virtue; everything that lifts us above the table where we eat or
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Clerval, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning
the sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse,
his total ignorance; and the conversation took a more general turn.
I thanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak. I saw plainly
that he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me;
and although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence
that knew no bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide
in him that event which was so often present to my recollection,
but which I feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply.
M. Krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time,
of almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums
Frankenstein |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: will save time to call it righteousness. By so doing I
intend no subterfuge to beg a question; I am indeed ready,
and more than willing, to accept the rigid consequence, and
lay aside, as far as the treachery of the reason will permit,
all former meanings attached to the word righteousness. What
is right is that for which a man's central self is ever ready
to sacrifice immediate or distant interests; what is wrong is
what the central self discards or rejects as incompatible
with the fixed design of righteousness.
To make this admission is to lay aside all hope of
definition. That which is right upon this theory is
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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 Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: Tatan Nene, a good-humored fair girl with the bosom of a wet nurse,
at which people laughed, and finally little Maria Blond, a young
damsel of fifteen, as thin and vicious as a street child, yet on the
high road to success, owing to her recent first appearance at the
Folies. Labordette had brought the whole collection in a single
fly, and they were stlll laughing at the way they had been squeezed
with Maria Blond on her knees. But on entering the room they pursed
up their lips, and all grew very conventional as they shook hands
and exchanged salutations. Gaga even affected the infantile and
lisped through excess of genteel deportment. Tatan Nene alone
transgressed. They had been telling her as they came along that six
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