| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: if not, never mind.
You are quite right, he said; and I would have you proceed as you have
begun.
Well then, I said, let me suppose that they repeat their question, What
account do you give of that which, in our way of speaking, is termed being
overcome by pleasure? I should answer thus: Listen, and Protagoras and I
will endeavour to show you. When men are overcome by eating and drinking
and other sensual desires which are pleasant, and they, knowing them to be
evil, nevertheless indulge in them, would you not say that they were
overcome by pleasure? They will not deny this. And suppose that you and I
were to go on and ask them again: 'In what way do you say that they are
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: not have fallen into better hands. It is certainly a great thing for a
virtuous woman to have married a man incapable of follies.
Occasionally some fops have been sufficiently impertinent to press the
hand of the marquise while dancing with her. They gained nothing in
return but contemptuous glances; all were made to feel the shock of
that insulting indifference which, like a spring frost, destroys the
germs of flattering hopes. Beaux, wits, and fops, men whose sentiments
are fed by sucking their canes, those of a great name, or a great
fame, those of the highest or the lowest rank in her own world, they
all blanch before her. She has conquered the right to converse as long
and as often as she chooses with the men who seem to her agreeable,
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: way. "What--by failure--do you stand to lose?"
He still, however, wouldn't have it. "Nothing!" he exclaimed, and
on the messenger's at this instant reappearing he was able to sink
the subject in their responsive advance. When, a few steps up the
street, under a lamp, he had put her into her four-wheeler and she
had asked him if the man had called for him no second conveyance,
he replied before the door was closed. "You won't take me with
you?"
"Not for the world."
"Then I shall walk."
"In the rain?"
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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 Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright;
And the dire thought of his committed evil
Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.
'Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,
Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;
Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,
To make him moan; but pity not his moans:
Stone him with harden'd hearts, harder than stones;
And let mild women to him lose their mildness,
Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.
'Let him have time to tear his curled hair,
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