| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: I shall live to fight for them in atonement of the sins I have
committed against them through the ignorance born of generations
of false teaching."
As he ceased speaking a weird call rang out across the waters of Omean.
I had heard it at the same time the previous evening and knew that
it marked the ending of the day, when the men of Omean spread their
silks upon the deck of battleship and cruiser and fall into the
dreamless sleep of Mars.
Our guard entered to inspect us for the last time before the
new day broke upon the world above. His duty was soon
performed and the heavy door of our prison closed behind him
The Gods of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: But for colour and shape, to what shall we compare it? To polished
cornelian, says Mr. Gosse. I say, to one of the great red
capsicums which hang drying in every Covent-garden seedsman's
window. Yet is either simile better than the guess of a certain
lady, who, entering a room wherein a couple of Cardium tuberculatum
were waltzing about a plate, exclaimed, "Oh dear! I always heard
that my pretty red coral came out of a fish, and here it is all
alive!"
"C. tuberculatum," says Mr. Gosse (who described it from specimens
which I sent him in 1854), "is far the finest species. The valves
are more globose and of a warmer colour; those that I have seen are
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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 Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: talked about. I want my music, my books, my companions. If I had
known no other life but this one of privation, I suppose it would
be different. If I had to live this life, I should make the best
of it. But I do not have to; and you know, tante Pelagie, you do
not need to. It seems to me," she added in a whisper, "that it is
a sin against myself. Ah, Tan'tante!--what is the matter with
Tan'tante?"
It was nothing; only a slight feeling of faintness, that would
soon pass. She entreated them to take no notice; but they brought
her some water and fanned her with a palmetto leaf.
But that night, in the stillness of the room, Mam'selle
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
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 Cratylus by Plato: Plato better, and many points which are now attributed to the extravagance
of Socrates' humour would have been found, like the allusions of
Aristophanes in the Clouds, to have gone home to the sophists and
grammarians of the day.
For the age was very busy with philological speculation; and many questions
were beginning to be asked about language which were parallel to other
questions about justice, virtue, knowledge, and were illustrated in a
similar manner by the analogy of the arts. Was there a correctness in
words, and were they given by nature or convention? In the presocratic
philosophy mankind had been striving to attain an expression of their
ideas, and now they were beginning to ask themselves whether the expression
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