| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: The slave of Falsehood, Pride, and Pain--
My heart has nought akin to thine;
Thy soul is powerless over mine."
But these were thoughts that vanished too;
Unwise, unholy, and untrue:
Do I despise the timid deer,
Because his limbs are fleet with fear?
Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl,
Because his form is gaunt and foul?
Or, hear with joy the leveret's cry,
Because it cannot bravely die?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: Certainly, if any one of them had been put before him he would have
rejected it with a laugh, as the sort of life that held no attractions
for him. He could not have said how it was that he had put these
absurd notions into his sister's head. Indeed, he prided himself upon
being well broken into a life of hard work, about which he had no sort
of illusions. His vision of his own future, unlike many such
forecasts, could have been made public at any moment without a blush;
he attributed to himself a strong brain, and conferred on himself a
seat in the House of Commons at the age of fifty, a moderate fortune,
and, with luck, an unimportant office in a Liberal Government. There
was nothing extravagant in a forecast of that kind, and certainly
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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 The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: the exalted face of Herr Georgiev; resting on Peter's drooping
shoulders, on the neglected mice and the wooden soldier, on the
closed eyes of a sick child--the worshiped sun, peering
forth--the golden window of the East.
CHAPTER XXVI
Jimmy was dying. Peter, fighting hard, was beaten at last. All
through the night he had felt it; during the hours before the
dawn there had been times when the small pulse wavered,
flickered, almost ceased. With the daylight there had been a
trifle of recovery, enough for a bit of hope, enough to make
harder Peter's acceptance of the inevitable.
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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 Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: would be no use in this so-called wealth, if no one, that is, had any
necessity for those things which now make us wish for wealth in order that
we may satisfy the desires and needs of the body in respect of our various
wants. And therefore if the possession of wealth is useful in ministering
to our bodily wants, and bodily wants were unknown to us, we should not
need wealth, and possibly there would be no such thing as wealth.
ERYXIAS: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: Then our conclusion is, as would appear, that wealth is what is
useful to this end?
Eryxias once more gave his assent, but the small argument considerably
troubled him.
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