| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: this country it was very frequent to meet with men that had had
from five or six to fourteen or fifteen wives; nay, and some more.
And I was informed that in the marshes on the other side of the
river over against Candy Island there was a farmer who was then
living with the five-and-twentieth wife, and that his son, who was
but about thirty-five years old, had already had about fourteen.
Indeed, this part of the story I only had by report, though from
good hands too; but the other is well known and easy to be inquired
into about Fobbing, Curringham, Thundersly, Benfleet, Prittlewell,
Wakering, Great Stambridge, Cricksea, Burnham, Dengy, and other
towns of the like situation. The reason, as a merry fellow told
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: ultimately a chasm which even sexual love could not bridge. The abnormal
institution of avowed inter-male sexual relations upon the highest plane
was one, and the most serious result, of this severance. The inevitable
and invincible desire of all highly developed human natures, to blend with
their sexual relationships their highest intellectual interests and
sympathies, could find no satisfaction or response in the relationship
between the immured, comparatively ignorant and helpless females of the
upper classes, in Greece, and the brilliant, cultured, and many-sided males
who formed its dominant class in the fifth and fourth centuries. Man
turned towards man; and parenthood, the divine gift of imparting human
life, was severed from the loftiest and profoundest phases of human
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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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: from a lamp-lighter with even the strongest spectacles.
(1) ETUDE BIOGRAPHIQUE SUR FRANCOIS VILLON. Paris: H. Menu.
Such was Villon's cynical philosophy. Four hundred years
after his death, when surely all danger might be considered
at an end, a pair of critical spectacles have been applied to
his own remains; and though he left behind him a sufficiently
ragged reputation from the first, it is only after these four
hundred years that his delinquencies have been finally
tracked home, and we can assign him to his proper place among
the good or wicked. It is a staggering thought, and one that
affords a fine figure of the imperishability of men's acts,
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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 First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers a
majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written Constitutional right,
it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution--certainly would if such
a right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of
minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations
and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the Constitution, that
controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be
framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may
occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate,
nor any document of reasonable length contain, express provisions
for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered
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