| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the opposite bank, and then she saw a quick movement in a
bush close at his side. She did not know what manner of
thing had caused it, but her intuition warned her that behind
that concealing screen lay mortal danger to the unconscious
man.
"Billy!" she cried, the unaccustomed name bursting from
her lips involuntarily. "In the bush at your left--look out!"
At the note of warning in her voice Byrne had turned at
her first word--it was all that saved his life. He saw the
half-naked savage and the out-shooting spear arm, and as he
would, instinctively, have ducked a right-for-the-head in the
The Mucker |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: iron pumps clanged as before.
"Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor
was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running
up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the
crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at
their own instance they were put down in the ship's run for
salvation. Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On
the contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they
had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders
to the last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a body.
But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all
Moby Dick |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: 'those who said of old time that mind rules the universe'; or the pregnant
observation that 'we are not always conscious of what we are doing or of
what happens to us,' a chance expression to which if philosophers had
attended they would have escaped many errors in psychology. We may
contrast the contempt which is poured upon the verbal difficulty of the one
and many, and the seriousness with the unity of opposites is regarded from
the higher point of view of abstract ideas: or compare the simple manner
in which the question of cause and effect and their mutual dependence is
regarded by Plato (to which modern science has returned in Mill and Bacon),
and the cumbrous fourfold division of causes in the Physics and Metaphysics
of Aristotle, for which it has puzzled the world to find a use in so many
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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 Glasses by Henry James: at present a direct contradiction; they seemed a negation not only
of new relationships but of every old one as well. I remember
nevertheless that when after a moment she walked beside me on the
grass I found myself nervously hoping she wouldn't as yet at any
rate tell me anything very dreadful; so that to stave off this
danger I harried her with questions about Mrs. Meldrum and, without
waiting for replies, became profuse on the subject of my own
doings. My companion was finely silent, and I felt both as if she
were watching my nervousness with a sort of sinister irony and as
if I were talking to some different and strange person. Flora
plain and obscure and dumb was no Flora at all. At Mrs. Meldrum's
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