| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: high windows across the valley - the feeling grows upon
you that this also is a piece of nature in the most
intimate sense; that this profusion of eccentricities,
this dream in masonry and living rock, is not a drop-
scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of every-day
reality, connected by railway and telegraph-wire with all
the capitals of Europe, and inhabited by citizens of the
familiar type, who keep ledgers, and attend church, and
have sold their immortal portion to a daily paper. By
all the canons of romance, the place demands to be half
deserted and leaning towards decay; birds we might admit
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: by the race, male and female must march side by side, acting and reacting
on each other through inheritance; or progress is impossible. The truth
that, as the existence of even the male Bushman would be impossible without
the existence of the analogous Bushwoman with the same gifts; and that as
races which can produce among their males a William Kingdon Clifford, a
Tolstoy, or a Robert Browning, would be inconceivable and impossible,
unless among its females it could also produce a Sophia Kovalevsky, a
George Eliot, or a Louise Michel; so, also, in the future, that higher and
more socialised human race we dream of can only come into existence,
because in both the sex forms have evolved together, now this sex and then
that, so to speak, catching up the ball of life and throwing it back to the
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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 Adventure by Jack London: take the Flibberty-Gibbet away from her; he could dissolve their
partnership;--any and all of which he knew would be foolish and
futile, and he could hear her explain in terse set terms that she
was legally of age and that nobody could say come or go to her.
No, his pride would never permit him to start for Poonga-Poonga,
though his heart whispered that nothing could be more welcome than
a message from her asking him to come and lend a hand. Her very
words--"lend a hand"; and in his fancy, he could see and hear her
saying them.
There was much in her wilful conduct that caused him to wince in
the heart of him. He was appalled by the thought of her shoulder
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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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: Besides, women are so naively saucy, so pretty, graceful, and withal
so true in lying,--they recognize so fully the utility of doing so in
order to avoid in social life the violent shocks which happiness might
not resist,--that lying is seen to be as necessary to their lives as
the cotton-wool in which they put away their jewels. Falsehood becomes
to them the foundation of speech; truth is exceptional; they tell it,
if they are virtuous, by caprice or by calculation. According to
individual character, some women laugh when they lie; others weep;
others are grave; some grow angry. After beginning life by feigning
indifference to the homage that deeply flatters them, they often end
by lying to themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority
Ferragus |
