| 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: Chromatrope owes its origin. In the same year he published a paper
on Vibrating Surfaces, in which he solved an acoustical problem
which, though of extreme simplicity when solved, appears to have
baffled many eminent men. The problem was to account for the fact
that light bodies, such as the seed of lycopodium, collected at the
vibrating parts of sounding plates, while sand ran to the nodal
lines. Faraday showed that the light bodies were entangled in the
little whirlwinds formed in the air over the places of vibration,
and through which the heavier sand was readily projected. Faraday's
resources as an experimentalist were so wonderful, and his delight
in experiment was so great, that he sometimes almost ran into excess
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: trusting in their roots, found strength to grow and prosper and be
straight and large upon the rapid slopes of the valley; others,
where there was a margin to the river, stood marshalled in a line
and mighty like cedars of Lebanon. Yet even where they grew most
thickly they were not to be thought of as a wood, but as a herd of
stalwart individuals; and the dome of each tree stood forth
separate and large, and as it were a little hill, from among the
domes of its companions. They gave forth a faint sweet perfume
which pervaded the air of the afternoon; autumn had put tints of
gold and tarnish in the green; and the sun so shone through and
kindled the broad foliage, that each chestnut was relieved against
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