| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: the principle of equality, I did not point out, ere I conclude,
the general influence which these same opinions and sentiments
may exercise upon the government of human societies. To succeed
in this object I shall frequently have to retrace my steps; but I
trust the reader will not refuse to follow me through paths
already known to him, which may lead to some new truth.
The principle of equality, which makes men independent of
each other, gives them a habit and a taste for following, in
their private actions, no other guide but their own will. This
complete independence, which they constantly enjoy towards their
equals and in the intercourse of private life, tends to make them
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: trumpeter, letting out a loud "cock-a-doodle-doo" before Napoleon spoke.
Even in the farmhouse, it was said, Napoleon inhabited separate apartments
from the others. He took his meals alone, with two dogs to wait upon him,
and always ate from the Crown Derby dinner service which had been in the
glass cupboard in the drawing-room. It was also announced that the gun
would be fired every year on Napoleon's birthday, as well as on the other
two anniversaries.
Napoleon was now never spoken of simply as "Napoleon." He was always
referred to in formal style as "our Leader, Comrade Napoleon," and this
pigs liked to invent for him such titles as Father of All Animals, Terror
of Mankind, Protector of the Sheep-fold, Ducklings' Friend, and the like.
Animal Farm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: feeding this bacon to a pickininny who sat beside me.
"Man, don't give away your meat," the mammy said. I told her
that I had had all I wanted. Then she said to the pickininny:
"Child, doan eat that meat. Save it foh you papa when he come
home."
When I got into New Orleans the next morning, I traded my
Plowboy tobacco for a bar of laundry soap. With my twenty-five
cents I bought a cotton undershirt. Then I went into the "jungle"
at Algiers, a town across the river from New Orleans, and built a
fire in the jungle (a wooded place where hoboes camp) and heated
some water in an old tin pail I found there. Then I took off all
|
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 Charmides by Plato: between 'making' and 'doing,' and with the help of a misapplied quotation
from Hesiod assigns to the words 'doing' and 'work' an exclusively good
sense: Temperance is doing one's own business;--(4) is doing good.
Still an element of knowledge is wanting which Critias is readily induced
to admit at the suggestion of Socrates; and, in the spirit of Socrates and
of Greek life generally, proposes as a fifth definition, (5) Temperance is
self-knowledge. But all sciences have a subject: number is the subject of
arithmetic, health of medicine--what is the subject of temperance or
wisdom? The answer is that (6) Temperance is the knowledge of what a man
knows and of what he does not know. But this is contrary to analogy; there
is no vision of vision, but only of visible things; no love of loves, but
|
