| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: their cranes--the two parts of the wrecked boat having been
previously secured by her--and then hoisting everything to her side,
and stacking her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it with
stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of an albatross; the Pequod
bore down in the leeward wake of Moby-Dick. At the well known,
methodic intervals, the whale's glittering spout was regularly
announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be reported
as just gone down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing the
deck, binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the last second of the
allotted hour expired, his voice was heard.--"Whose is the doubloon
now? D'ye see him?" and if the reply was, No, sir! straightway he
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: Lysis and Menexenus gave a faint assent to this; and Hippothales changed
into all manner of colours with delight.
Here, intending to revise the argument, I said: Can we point out any
difference between the congenial and the like? For if that is possible,
then I think, Lysis and Menexenus, there may be some sense in our argument
about friendship. But if the congenial is only the like, how will you get
rid of the other argument, of the uselessness of like to like in as far as
they are like; for to say that what is useless is dear, would be absurd?
Suppose, then, that we agree to distinguish between the congenial and the
like--in the intoxication of argument, that may perhaps be allowed.
Very true.
Lysis |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: still more difficult to maintain at a time at which one party is
losing strength, and the other is gaining it. This rapid and
disproportionate increase of certain States threatens the
independence of the others. New York might perhaps succeed, with
its 2,000,000 of inhabitants and its forty representatives, in
dictating to the other States in Congress. But even if the more
powerful States make no attempt to bear down the lesser ones, the
danger still exists; for there is almost as much in the
possibility of the act as in the act itself. The weak generally
mistrust the justice and the reason of the strong. The States
which increase less rapidly than the others look upon those which
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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 House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: denounced, and it did not take her long to learn that a beauty
needs more tact than the possessor of an average set of features.
Her ambitions were not as crude as Mrs. Bart's. It had been among
that lady's grievances that her husband--in the early days,
before he was too tired--had wasted his evenings in what she
vaguely described as "reading poetry"; and among the effects
packed off to auction after his death were a score or two of
dingy volumes which had struggled for existence among the boots
and medicine bottles of his dressing-room shelves. There was in
Lily a vein of sentiment, perhaps transmitted from this source,
which gave an idealizing touch to her most prosaic purposes. She
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