| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: is.' 'Has he only new gods, or none at all?' 'None at all.' 'What, not
even the sun and moon?' 'No; why, he says that the sun is a stone, and the
moon earth.' That, replies Socrates, is the old confusion about
Anaxagoras; the Athenian people are not so ignorant as to attribute to the
influence of Socrates notions which have found their way into the drama,
and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates undertakes to show that
Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has been compounding a riddle in this part
of the indictment: 'There are no gods, but Socrates believes in the
existence of the sons of gods, which is absurd.'
Leaving Meletus, who has had enough words spent upon him, he returns to the
original accusation. The question may be asked, Why will he persist in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The United States Constitution: Jurisdiction of the Crime.
No person held to Service or Labor in one State, under the Laws thereof,
escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein,
be discharged from such Service or Labor, But shall be delivered up on Claim
of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due.
Section 3. New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union;
but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction
of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two
or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the
Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules
The United States Constitution |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: this construction of the present. Books were to be written, and since
books must be written in rooms, and rooms must have hangings, and
outside the windows there must be land, and an horizon to that land,
and trees perhaps, and a hill, they sketched a habitation for
themselves upon the outline of great offices in the Strand and
continued to make an account of the future upon the omnibus which took
them towards Chelsea; and still, for both of them, it swam
miraculously in the golden light of a large steady lamp.
As the night was far advanced they had the whole of the seats on the
top of the omnibus to choose from, and the roads, save for an
occasional couple, wearing even at midnight, an air of sheltering
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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 When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: But we plainly heard Dal on the first floor and Flannigan on the
second yelling "fire," and the patter of feet as the guards ran
to the front of the house. And at that instant we remembered Aunt
Selina!
That was the cause of the whole trouble. I don't know why they
turned on me; she wasn't my aunt. But by the time we had got her
out of bed, and had wrapped her in an eiderdown comfort, and
stuck slippers on her feet and a motor veil on her head, the
glare at the front of the house was beginning to die away. She
didn't understand at all and we had no time to explain. I
remember that she wanted to go back and get her "plate," whatever
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