| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: answer you; allow me to speak to your daughter,
alone" . . .
"Never!" she exclaimed, rising from her
chair in violent agitation.
"As you wish," I answered, preparing to go
away.
She fell into thought, made a sign to me with
her hand that I should wait a little, and left the
room.
Five minutes passed. My heart was beating
violently, but my thoughts were tranquil, my
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: that other life of my dreams.
I have mentioned my reticence. Only once did I confide
the strangeness of it all to another. He was a boy--my
chum; and we were eight years old. From my dreams I
reconstructed for him pictures of that vanished world
in which I do believe I once lived. I told him of the
terrors of that early time, of Lop-Ear and the pranks
we played, of the gibbering councils, and of the Fire
People and their squatting places.
He laughed at me, and jeered, and told me tales of
ghosts and of the dead that walk at night. But mostly
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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 Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: Passepartout was ignorant that, if the face of his watch had
been divided into twenty-four hours, like the Italian clocks,
he would have no reason for exultation; for the hands of his watch
would then, instead of as now indicating nine o'clock in the morning,
indicate nine o'clock in the evening, that is, the twenty-first hour
after midnight precisely the difference between London time and that
of the one hundred and eightieth meridian. But if Fix had been able
to explain this purely physical effect, Passepartout would not have admitted,
even if he had comprehended it. Moreover, if the detective had been on board
at that moment, Passepartout would have joined issue with him on a quite
different subject, and in an entirely different manner.
Around the World in 80 Days |
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 Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: the greater number will be always discontented."
"The discontent," said the Princess, "which is thus unreasonable, I
hope that I shall always have spirit to despise and you power to
repress."
"Discontent," answered Rasselas, "will not always be without reason
under the most just and vigilant administration of public affairs.
None, however attentive, can always discover that merit which
indigence or faction may happen to obscure, and none, however
powerful, can always reward it. Yet he that sees inferior desert
advanced above him will naturally impute that preference to
partiality or caprice, and indeed it can scarcely be hoped that any
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