Today's Stichomancy for Enrico Fermi

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton:

what matters it?--I often dreamed that this would come just because I believed it would not. But why should one control the imagination when it alone can give us happiness for a little while? I gave it rein, for I thought that one-half of my life was to be passed in that unreal but by no means niggardly world. And I thought of everything. To change your religion would mean the ruin of your career; moreover, it is not a possibility of your character. Were it I think I should not love you so much. Nor could I bear to think of any change in you. Only

Rezanov

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon:

limbs, but will have empty veins, and nourish little. Taxes and imposts upon them, do seldom good to the king's revenue; for that that he wins in the hundred, he leeseth in the shire; the particular rates being increased, but the total bulk of trading, rather decreased.

For their commons; there is little danger from them, except it be, where they have great and po- tent heads; or where you meddle with the point of religion, or their customs, or means of life.

For their men of war; it is a dangerous state,

Essays of Francis Bacon

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

fraction of a second to drink the lifeblood in the centre of some savage heart.

And thus I fought as I never had fought before, against such frightful odds that I cannot realize even now that human muscles could have withstood that awful onslaught, that terrific weight of hurtling tons of ferocious, battling flesh.

With the fear that we would escape them, the creatures redoubled their efforts to pull me down, and though the ground about me was piled high with their dead and dying comrades, they succeeded at last in overwhelming me, and I went down beneath them for the second time that day, and once again

The Gods of Mars

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 Sophist by Plato:

unity under which they were all included. How will you maintain your ground against him?

THEAETETUS: How, Stranger, can I describe an image except as something fashioned in the likeness of the true?

STRANGER: And do you mean this something to be some other true thing, or what do you mean?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not another true thing, but only a resemblance.

STRANGER: And you mean by true that which really is?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And the not true is that which is the opposite of the true?

THEAETETUS: Exactly.