| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: "I have been wanting to speak to you, Jekyll," began the
latter. "You know that will of yours?"
A close observer might have gathered that the topic was
distasteful; but the doctor carried it off gaily. "My poor
Utterson," said he, "you are unfortunate in such a client. I
never saw a man so distressed as you were by my will; unless it
were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what he called my
scientific heresies. O, I know he's a good fellow--you needn't
frown--an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more of
him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant
pedant. I was never more disappointed in any man than Lanyon."
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: I did something more than this at that moment:
I caught a glimpse of the possibility that Miss Tita wished me
really to understand. If she did not wish me to understand,
if she wished me to keep away, why had she not locked the door
of communication between the sitting room and the sala? That
would have been a definite sign that I was to leave them alone.
If I did not leave them alone she meant me to come for a purpose--
a purpose now indicated by the quick, fantastic idea that to oblige
me she had unlocked the secretary. She had not left the key,
but the lid would probably move if I touched the button.
This theory fascinated me, and I bent over very close to judge.
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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 Anabasis by Xenophon: years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
Anabasis |
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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: female bodies are not more divided from each other than those of the lion
and lioness. Our remote Saxon ancestors, with their great, almost naked,
white bodies and flowing hair worn long by both sexes, were but little
distinguished from each other; while among their modern descendants the
short hair, darkly clothed, manifestly two-legged male differs absolutely
from the usually long-haired, colour bedizened, much beskirted female.
Were the structural differences between male and female really one half as
marked as the artificial visual differences, they would be greater than
those dividing, not merely any species of man from another, but as great as
those which divide orders in the animal world. Only a mind exceedingly
alert and analytical can fail ultimately to be misled by habitual visual
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