| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: some of the men went down into the river, to look for fresh pools of water,
and they found a nigger, hidden away in a hole in the bank, not five
hundred yards from here! They found the bloody rascal by a little path he
tramped down to the water, trodden hard, just like a porcupine's walk.
They got him in the hole like an aardvark, with a bush over the mouth, so
you couldn't see it. He'd evidently been there a long time, the floor was
full of bones of fish he'd caught in the pool, and there was a bit of root
like a stick half gnawed through. He'd been potted, and got two bullet
wounds in the thigh; but he could walk already. It's evident he was just
waiting till we were gone, to clear off after his people. He'd got that
beastly scurvy look a nigger gets when he hasn't had anything to eat for a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: science of itself, effect? Answer me.
That is not the true way of pursuing the enquiry, Socrates, he said; for
wisdom is not like the other sciences, any more than they are like one
another: but you proceed as if they were alike. For tell me, he said,
what result is there of computation or geometry, in the same sense as a
house is the result of building, or a garment of weaving, or any other work
of any other art? Can you show me any such result of them? You cannot.
That is true, I said; but still each of these sciences has a subject which
is different from the science. I can show you that the art of computation
has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to
themselves and to each other. Is not that true?
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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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: where he began to plough and harrow. Wondering if I was closeted with a
maniac, I looked at the book in my passive hand, and saw diagrams of
various bones to me unknown, and men's names of which I was equally
ignorant--Mivart, Topinard, and more,--but at last that of Huxley. But
this agreeable sight was spoiled at once by the quite horrible words
Nycticebidoe, platyrrhine, catarrhine, from which I raised my eyes to see
him coming at me with two pamphlets, and scolding as he came.
"Are you educated, yes? Have been to college, yes? Then perhaps you will
understand."
Certainly I understood immediately that he and his pamphlets were as bad
as the book, or worse, in their use of a vocabulary designed to cause
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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 Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: nightly play for small stakes until they win a few francs. A
theory that he was a detective in the employ of the Home Office
found favor at one time, but Vautrin urged that "Goriot was not
sharp enough for one of that sort." There were yet other
solutions; Father Goriot was a skinflint, a shark of a money-
lender, a man who lived by selling lottery tickets. He was by
turns all the most mysterious brood of vice and shame and misery;
yet, however vile his life might be, the feeling of repulsion
which he aroused in others was not so strong that he must be
banished from their society--he paid his way. Besides, Goriot had
his uses, every one vented his spleen or sharpened his wit on
Father Goriot |
