| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.
Indeed, 't is true that Henry told me of;
For I have often heard my mother say
I came into the world with my legs forward.
Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste
And seek their ruin that usurp'd our right?
The midwife wonder'd; and the women cried
'O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!'
And so I was, which plainly signified
That I should snarl and bite and play the dog.
Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: reverie, every faculty within him was at once concentrated in
boundless love, the first love of a young man, a passion which is
strong indeed in all, but which in him was raised to incalculable
power by the perennial ardor of his senses, the character of his
ideas, and the manner in which he lived. This passion became a gulf,
into which the hapless fellow threw everything; a gulf whither the
mind dare not venture, since his, flexible and firm as it was, was
lost there. There all was mysterious, for everything went on in that
moral world, closed to most men, whose laws were revealed to him--
perhaps to his sorrow.
When an accident threw me in the way of his uncle, the good man showed
Louis Lambert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just
as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves,
and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those
who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it,
so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do
most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we
have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem
and know the life - educated men who live in the East End - coming
forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic
impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the
ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are
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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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree
and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I
love her all the time."
"You're revolting," said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice,
dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: "Do you
know why we left Chicago? I'm surprised that they didn't treat you to
the story of that little spree."
Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.
"Daisy, that's all over now," he said earnestly. "It doesn't matter any
more. Just tell him the truth--that you never loved him--and it's all
wiped out forever."
The Great Gatsby |
