| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: place--out of which their friends had passed, and the charm of it
was that even before they had spoken they had practically arranged
with each other to stay behind for talk. The charm, happily, was
in other things too--partly in there being scarce a spot at
Weatherend without something to stay behind for. It was in the way
the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way
the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky,
reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old
tapestry, old gold, old colour. It was most of all perhaps in the
way she came to him as if, since she had been turned on to deal
with the simpler sort, he might, should he choose to keep the whole
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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 Sportsman by Xenophon: Schneider's question: Quidni sensum eundem servavit homo
religiosus in hinnulis?
[5] "The fawns (of the roe deer) are born in the spring, usually early
in May," Lydekker, "R. N. H." ii. p. 383; of the red deer
"generally in the early part of June," ib. 346.
[6] {orgadas} = "gagnages," du Fouilloux, "Comment le veneur doit
aller en queste aux taillis ou gaignages pour voir le cerf a
veue," ap. Talbot, op. cit. i. p. 331.
[7] Or, "off the wood."
[8] It seems they were not trained to restrain themselves.
[9] Or, "set himself to observe from some higher place." Cf. Aristoph.
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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 Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: them of doing things backwards, but it is we who deserve
such blame because they antedated us in the doing of them.
We shake each other's hands, they each shake their own
hands. We take off our hats as a mark of respect, they
keep theirs on. We wear black for mourning, they wear
white. We wear our vests inside, they wear theirs outside.
A hundred other things more or less familiar to us all,
illustrate this rule. In some of their nursery rhymes everything
is said and done on the "cart before the horse" plan.
This is illustrated by a rhyme in which when the speaker
heard a disturbance outside his door he discovered it was
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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 Phaedo by Plato: against eating? And this is only one instance out of ten thousand of the
opposition of the soul to the things of the body.
Very true.
But we have already acknowledged that the soul, being a harmony, can never
utter a note at variance with the tensions and relaxations and vibrations
and other affections of the strings out of which she is composed; she can
only follow, she cannot lead them?
It must be so, he replied.
And yet do we not now discover the soul to be doing the exact opposite--
leading the elements of which she is believed to be composed; almost always
opposing and coercing them in all sorts of ways throughout life, sometimes
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