| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: The next day Farrabesche and his son came to the chateau with game.
The keeper also brought, for Francis, a cocoanut cup, elaborately
carved, a genuine work of art, representing a battle. Madame Graslin
was walking at the time on the terrace, in the direction which
overlooked Les Tascherons. She sat down on a bench, took the cup in
her hand and looked earnestly at the deft piece of work. A few tears
came into her eyes.
"You must have suffered very much," she said to Farrabesche, after a
few moments' silence.
"How could I help it, madame?" he replied; "for I was there without
the hope of escape, which supports the life of most convicts."
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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 Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: Beginner upon the bicycling saddle, and that the ruinous state of
the right knee was equally eloquent of the concussions attendant
on that person's hasty, frequently causeless, and invariably ill-
conceived descents. One large bruise on the shin is even more
characteristic of the 'prentice cyclist, for upon every one of
them waits the jest of the unexpected treadle. You try at least
to walk your machine in an easy manner, and whack!--you are
rubbing your shin. So out of innocence we ripen. Two bruises on
that place mark a certain want of aptitude in learning, such as
one might expect in a person unused to muscular exercise.
Blisters on the hands are eloquent of the nervous clutch of 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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: settled. Thus my colony was in a manner settled as follows: The
Spaniards possessed my original habitation, which was the capital
city, and extended their plantations all along the side of the
brook, which made the creek that I have so often described, as far
as my bower; and as they increased their culture, it went always
eastward. The English lived in the north-east part, where Will
Atkins and his comrades began, and came on southward and south-
west, towards the back part of the Spaniards; and every plantation
had a great addition of land to take in, if they found occasion, so
that they need not jostle one another for want of room. All the
east end of the island was left uninhabited, that if any of the
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Lesser Hippias by Plato: SOCRATES: You, sweet Hippias, like Odysseus, are a deceiver yourself.
HIPPIAS: Certainly not, Socrates; what makes you say so?
SOCRATES: Because you say that Achilles does not speak falsely from
design, when he is not only a deceiver, but besides being a braggart, in
Homer's description of him is so cunning, and so far superior to Odysseus
in lying and pretending, that he dares to contradict himself, and Odysseus
does not find him out; at any rate he does not appear to say anything to
him which would imply that he perceived his falsehood.
HIPPIAS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Did you not observe that afterwards, when he is speaking to
Odysseus, he says that he will sail away with the early dawn; but to Ajax
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