| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: struck forth a path for himself, until it reached a mighty wall of rock,
smooth and without break, stretching as far as the eye could see. "I will
rear a stair against it; and, once this wall climbed, I shall be almost
there," he said bravely; and worked. With his shuttle of imagination he
dug out stones; but half of them would not fit, and half a month's work
would roll down because those below were ill chosen. But the hunter worked
on, saying always to himself, "Once this wall climbed, I shall be almost
there. This great work ended!"
At last he came out upon the top, and he looked about him. Far below
rolled the white mist over the valleys of superstition, and above him
towered the mountains. They had seemed low before; they were of an
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: what IS coming into it? All this book, I hope, will bear a
little on that. Our people never formulates; it keeps words for
jests and ironies. In the meanwhile the old shapes, the old
attitudes remain, subtly changed and changing still, sheltering
strange tenants. Bladesover House is now let furnished to Sir
Reuben Lichtenstein, and has been since old Lady Drew died; it
was my odd experience to visit there, in the house of which my
mother had been housekeeper, when my uncle was at the climax of
Tono-Bungay. It was curious to notice then the little
differences that had come to things with this substitution. To
borrow an image from my mineralogical days, these Jews were not
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: a very great quantity of beef and mutton also is brought every year
and every week to London from this side of England, and much more
than was formerly known to be fed there.
I cannot omit, however little it may seem, that this county of
Suffolk is particularly famous for furnishing the City of London
and all the counties round with turkeys, and that it is thought
there are more turkeys bred in this county and the part of Norfolk
that adjoins to it than in all the rest of England, especially for
sale, though this may be reckoned, as I say above, but a trifling
thing to take notice of in these remarks; yet, as I have hinted,
that I shall observe how London is in general supplied with all its
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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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: they both want for their children is the communal training, the
apprenticeship to society, the lessons in holding one's own among
people of all sorts with whom one is not, as in the home, on
privileged terms. These can be acquired only by "mixing with the
world," no matter how wicked the world is. No parent cares twopence
whether his children can write Latin hexameters or repeat the dates of
the accession of all the English monarchs since the Conqueror; but all
parents are earnestly anxious about the manners of their children.
Better Claude Duval than Kaspar Hauser. Laborers who are
contemptuously anti-clerical in their opinions will send their
daughters to the convent school because the nuns teach them some sort
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