| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity as I
had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an
approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the
freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow
into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and
longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an
hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the
transforming draught.
I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself
upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by
the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: would boast of, although he must be miserable without them. I
dwell the longer upon this subject from the desire I have to make
the society of an English YAHOO by any means not insupportable;
and therefore I here entreat those who have any tincture of this
absurd vice, that they will not presume to come in my sight.
Footnotes:
(1) A stang is a pole or perch; sixteen feet and a half.
(2) An act of parliament has been since passed by which some
breaches of trust have been made capital.
(3) Britannia. -SIR W. SCOTT.
(4) London. -SIR W. SCOTT.
Gulliver's Travels |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: Then the old gentleman spun himself round with velocity in
the opposite direction, continued to spin until his long cloak was
all wound neatly about him, clapped his cap on his head, very much
on one side (for it could not stand upright without going through
the ceiling), gave an additional twist to his corkscrew mustaches,
and replied with perfect coolness: "Gentlemen, I wish you a very
good morning. At twelve o'clock tonight I'll call again; after
such a refusal of hospitality as I have just experienced, you will
not be surprised if that visit is the last I ever pay you."
"If ever I catch you here again," muttered Schwartz,
coming, half frightened, out of the corner--but before he could
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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 Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: more faithful in its service than he in his duty to Bartolommeo--
he, a man with that peculiar piece of human mechanism within him
that we call a heart.
Don Juan the sceptic shut the flask again in the secret drawer in
the Gothic table--he meant to run no more risks of losing the
mysterious liquid.
Even at that solemn moment he heard the murmur of a crowd in the
gallery, a confused sound of voices, of stifled laughter and
light footfalls, and the rustling of silks--the sounds of a band
of revelers struggling for gravity. The door opened, and in came
the Prince and Don Juan's friends, the seven courtesans, and the
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