| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: Brazil I have often admired the varied beauty of the
bananas, palms, and orange-trees contrasted together; and
here we also have the bread-fruit, conspicuous from its large,
glossy, and deeply digitated leaf. It is admirable to behold
groves of a tree, sending forth its branches with the vigour
of an English oak, loaded with large and most nutritious
fruit. However seldom the usefulness of an object can
account for the pleasure of beholding it, in the case of these
beautiful woods, the knowledge of their high productiveness
no doubt enters largely into the feeling of admiration. The
little winding paths, cool from the surrounding shade, led
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: much as amongst the haughtiest scions of a feudal race, pride of
birth, respect for their ancestry and their descendants, disdain
of their inferiors, a dread of contact, a taste for etiquette,
precedents, and antiquity.]
The permanent inequality of conditions not only gives
servants certain peculiar virtues and vices, but it places them
in a peculiar relation with respect to their masters. Amongst
aristocratic nations the poor man is familiarized from his
childhood with the notion of being commanded: to whichever side
he turns his eyes the graduated structure of society and the
aspect of obedience meet his view. Hence in those countries the
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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 The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: and steel. "All of which"--I can say in the words of the poet--
"all of which I saw and part of which I was."
The train that was taking us to Ohio was an Erie local, and the
stops were so numerous that we thought we should never get there.
A man on the train bought ginger bread and pop and gave us kids
a treat. It has been my practice ever since to do likewise for
alien youngsters that I meet on trains.
When we reached Hubbard, father met us and took us to an
uncle's. We did not stop to wash the grime of travel from our
faces until after we had filled our stomachs. Once refreshed with
food, our religion returned to us, in the desire to be clean and
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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 The Republic by Plato: of view different--the beautiful ugly, the pious impious, the just unjust?
Is not the double also the half, and are not heavy and light relative terms
which pass into one another? Everything is and is not, as in the old
riddle--'A man and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a bird
with a stone and not a stone.' The mind cannot be fixed on either
alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted
objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being and
not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable objects are
the proper matter of knowledge. And he who grovels in the world of sense,
and has only this uncertain perception of things, is not a philosopher, but
a lover of opinion only...
The Republic |
