| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: after she's got it combed and brushed, I reckon. I've seen her
fix all these things so much that I can do them all just her way,
though I don't know the law of any of them. But she knows the law.
She knows the why and the how both; but I don't know the why;
I only know the how."
He took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom
as I had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows,
carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror
and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand,
with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish,
and on a rack more than a dozen towels--towels too clean and white
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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 Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: Prosper Magnan, Wahlenfer, and Taillefer? Here we are in the middle of
the nineteenth century! Shall I build a hospital, or institute a prize
for virtue? A prize for virtue would be given to scoundrels; and as
for hospitals, they seem to me to have become in these days the
protectors of vice. Besides, such charitable actions, more or less
profitable to vanity, do they constitute reparation?--and to whom do I
owe reparation? But I love; I love passionately. My love is my life.
If I, without apparent motive, suggest to a young girl accustomed to
luxury, to elegance, to a life fruitful of all enjoyments of art, a
young girl who loves to idly listen at the opera to Rossini's music,--
if to her I should propose that she deprive herself of fifteen hundred
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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 The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: born of nothing more than a spectral deepening of the sky's blue,
pressed down upon the rumbling hills. Then the lightning flashed
again, somewhat brighter than before, and the crowd fancied that
it had showed a certain mistiness around the altar-stone on the
distant height. No one, however, had been using the telescope
at that instant. The whippoorwills continued their irregular pulsation,
and the men of Dunwich braced themselves tensely against some
imponderable menace with which the atmosphere seemed surcharged.
Without warning came those deep, cracked, raucous vocal sounds
which will never leave the memory of the stricken group who heard
them. Not from any human throat were they born, for the organs
The Dunwich Horror |
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 The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: quote these words, dissuades from such a use of prayer, but it is
easy to see that he enjoys making his thrust at the cold dead
church members.
The next condition of success is the apparent existence, in large
numbers, of minds who unite healthy-mindedness with readiness for
regeneration by letting go. Protestantism has been too
pessimistic as regards the natural man, Catholicism has been too
legalistic and moralistic, for either the one or the other to
appeal in any generous way to the type of character formed of
this peculiar mingling of elements. However few of us here
present may belong to such a type, it is now evident that it
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