| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: with clear-eyed resignation; of his wounded pride, we knew only
from his silence. He returned to that city where he had lorded it
in his ambitious youth; lived there alone, seeing few; striving to
retrieve the irretrievable; at times still grappling with that
mortal frailty that had brought him down; still joying in his
friend's successes; his laugh still ready but with kindlier music;
and over all his thoughts the shadow of that unalterable law which
he had disavowed and which had brought him low. Lastly, when his
bodily evils had quite disabled him, he lay a great while dying,
still without complaint, still finding interests; to his last step
gentle, urbane and with the will to smile.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: you've been in trouble before, on account of wicked
enemies, and it isn't right for the Ruler of all Oz to
put herself in danger."
"Perhaps I shall be in no danger at all," returned
Ozma, with a little laugh. "You mustn't imagine danger,
Dorothy, for one should only imagine nice things, and
we do not know that the Skeezers and Flatheads are
wicked people or my enemies. Perhaps they would be good
and listen to reason."
"Dorothy is right, your Majesty," asserted the
Sorceress. "It is true we know nothing of these faraway
Glinda of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: and the base base?
That, he said, is as I please.
And do you please?
Yes, he said.
And you will admit that the same is the same, and the other other; for
surely the other is not the same; I should imagine that even a child will
hardly deny the other to be other. But I think, Dionysodorus, that you
must have intentionally missed the last question; for in general you and
your brother seem to me to be good workmen in your own department, and to
do the dialectician's business excellently well.
What, said he, is the business of a good workman? tell me, in the first
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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 Animal Farm by George Orwell: confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses
lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of
blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones.
When it was all over, the remaining animals, except for the pigs and dogs,
crept away in a body. They were shaken and miserable. They did not know
which was more shocking--the treachery of the animals who had leagued
themselves with Snowball, or the cruel retribution they had just
witnessed. In the old days there had often been scenes of bloodshed
equally terrible, but it seemed to all of them that it was far worse now
that it was happening among themselves. Since Jones had left the farm,
until today, no animal had killed another animal. Not even a rat had been
Animal Farm |
