| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: The experimental researches of Faraday are so voluminous,
their descriptions are so detailed, and their wealth of illustration
is so great, as to render it a heavy labour to master them.
The multiplication of proofs, necessary and interesting when the new
truths had to be established, are however less needful now when
these truths have become household words in science. I have
therefore tried in the following pages to compress the body, without
injury to the spirit, of these imperishable investigations, and to
present them in a form which should be convenient and useful to the
student of the present day.
While I write, the volumes of the Life of Faraday by Dr. Bence
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: expanse of the sky, the soldier dreamed of France--he smelled with
delight the gutters of Paris--he remembered the towns through which he
had passed, the faces of his comrades, the most minute details of his
life. His Southern fancy soon showed him the stones of his beloved
Provence, in the play of the heat which undulated above the wide
expanse of the desert. Realizing the danger of this cruel mirage, he
went down the opposite side of the hill to that by which he had come
up the day before. The remains of a rug showed that this place of
refuge had at one time been inhabited; at a short distance he saw some
palm trees full of dates. Then the instinct which binds us to life
awoke again in his heart. He hoped to live long enough to await 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 Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: was crowded with men, the two forges flaming, the one above
the other, upon the beacon, while the anvils thundered with
the rebounding noise of their wooden supports, and formed a
curious contrast with the occasional clamour of the surges.
The wind was westerly, and the weather being extremely
agreeable, as soon after breakfast as the tide had
sufficiently overflowed the rock to float the boats over it,
the smiths, with a number of the artificers, returned to the
beacon, carrying their fishing-tackle along with them. In the
course of the forenoon, the beacon exhibited a still more
extraordinary appearance than the rock had done in the
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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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of
an indistinct but varied murmur and flow of the minister's very
peculiar voice.
This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a
listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the
preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the
mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion
and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to
the human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by
its passage through the church walls, Hester Prynne listened with
The Scarlet Letter |
