| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: an enlargement of a family group photograph, too, and an illuminated
address presented to my first husband on his marriage. I am often there;
it makes such a pleasant excursion for a fine Saturday afternoon."
She suddenly lay down flat on her back, took in six long breaths, and sat
up again.
"The death agony was dreadful," she said brightly; "of the second, I mean.
The 'first' was run into by a furniture wagon, and had fifty marks stolen
out of a new waistcoat pocket, but the 'second' was dying for sixty-seven
hours. I never ceased crying once--not even to put the children to bed."
A young Russian, with a "bang" curl on her forehead, turned to me.
"Can you do the 'Salome' dance?" she asked. "I can."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: ground seemed to be but one more empty tenement in the void. Was
that boy asleep, or did he stand waiting at the foot of
Slightly's tree, with his dagger in his hand?
There was no way of knowing, save by going down. Hook let his
cloak slip softly to the ground, and then biting his lips till a
lewd blood stood on them, he stepped into the tree. He was a
brave man, but for a moment he had to stop there and wipe his brow,
which was dripping like a candle. Then, silently, he let himself
go into the unknown.
He arrived unmolested at the foot of the shaft, and stood still
again, biting at his breath, which had almost left him. As his
Peter Pan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: metaphysical, and the scientific: for truly out of the vagueness
of theological mysticism this conception which we call the
Philosophy of History was raised to a scientific principle,
according to which the past was explained and the future predicted
by reference to general laws.
Now, just as the earliest account of the nature of the progress of
humanity is to be found in Plato, so in him we find the first
explicit attempt to found a universal philosophy of history upon
wide rational grounds. Having created an ideally perfect state,
the philosopher proceeds to give an elaborate theory of the complex
causes which produce revolutions, of the moral effects of various
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: have had their laws successively determined, and, as it were, forced upon
them simply by experience of the hurtfulness of particular crimes and
disputes, would by this process come to be possessed of less perfect
institutions than those which, from the commencement of their association
as communities, have followed the appointments of some wise legislator. It
is thus quite certain that the constitution of the true religion, the
ordinances of which are derived from God, must be incomparably superior to
that of every other. And, to speak of human affairs, I believe that the
pre-eminence of Sparta was due not to the goodness of each of its laws in
particular, for many of these were very strange, and even opposed to good
morals, but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual,
Reason Discourse |
