| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: of at least one chapter of your Bible, Proverbs xxxi., without need
of any laboured comment, sermon, or meditation.
In these, then (and of course in all minor ways besides, that you
can discover in your own household), you must be to the best of your
strength usefully employed during the greater part of the day, so
that you may be able at the end of it to say, as proudly as any
peasant, that you have not eaten the bread of idleness.
Then, secondly, I said, you are not to be cruel. Perhaps you think
there is no chance of your being so; and indeed I hope it is not
likely that you should be deliberately unkind to any creature; but
unless you are deliberately kind to every creature, you will often
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: measurements. There were persons to be observed, singly or in
couples, bending toward objects in out-of-the-way corners with
their hands on their knees and their heads nodding quite as with
the emphasis of an excited sense of smell. When they were two they
either mingled their sounds of ecstasy or melted into silences of
even deeper import, so that there were aspects of the occasion that
gave it for Marcher much the air of the "look round," previous to a
sale highly advertised, that excites or quenches, as may be, the
dream of acquisition. The dream of acquisition at Weatherend would
have had to be wild indeed, and John Marcher found himself, among
such suggestions, disconcerted almost equally by the presence of
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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 A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Grasses run like a green sea
O'er the lawn up to my knee.
Under grass alone he lies,
Looking up with leaden eyes,
Scarlet coat and pointed gun,
To the stars and to the sun.
When the grass is ripe like grain,
When the scythe is stoned again,
When the lawn is shaven clear,
The my hole shall reappear.
I shall find him, never fear,
A Child's Garden of Verses |
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 Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: Tom into his ear; and as he sat there the little man told the beast
how to go, crying out, 'Go on!' and 'Stop!' as he wanted: and thus the
horse went on just as well as if the woodman had driven it himself
into the wood. It happened that as the horse was going a little too
fast, and Tom was calling out, 'Gently! gently!' two strangers came
up. 'What an odd thing that is!' said one: 'there is a cart going
along, and I hear a carter talking to the horse, but yet I can see no
one.' 'That is queer, indeed,' said the other; 'let us follow the
cart, and see where it goes.' So they went on into the wood, till at
last they came to the place where the woodman was. Then Tom Thumb,
seeing his father, cried out, 'See, father, here I am with the cart,
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
