| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: tendencies of the heirs, are generally well understood among the
slaves who are to be divided, and all have their aversions and
preferences. But, neither their aversions nor their preferences
avail them anything.
On the death of old master, I was immediately sent for, to be
valued and divided with the other property. Personally, my
concern was, mainly, about my possible removal from the home of
Master Hugh, which, after that of my grandmother, was the most
endeared to me. But, the whole thing, as a feature of slavery,
shocked me. It furnished me anew insight into the unnatural
power to which I was subjected. My detestation of slavery,
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: Do any remain?
Indeed, Socrates, I cannot find any.
But, O Menexenus! I said, may we not have been altogether wrong in our
conclusions?
I am sure that we have been wrong, Socrates, said Lysis. And he blushed as
he spoke, the words seeming to come from his lips involuntarily, because
his whole mind was taken up with the argument; there was no mistaking his
attentive look while he was listening.
I was pleased at the interest which was shown by Lysis, and I wanted to
give Menexenus a rest, so I turned to him and said, I think, Lysis, that
what you say is true, and that, if we had been right, we should never have
Lysis |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: against prostitution with prayer and persuasion, shelters and
scanty alms, will be a losing one. There was a time when they
were able to urge that though "the white-lead factory where Anne
Jane was poisoned" may be a far more terrible place than Mrs
Warren's house, yet hell is still more dreadful. Nowadays they
no longer believe in hell; and the girls among whom they are
working know that they do not believe in it, and would laugh at
them if they did. So well have the rescuers learnt that Mrs
Warren's defence of herself and indictment of society is the
thing that most needs saying, that those who know me personally
reproach me, not for writing this play, but for wasting my
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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 The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: or three evenings in his cousin's house, or with the friends who made
up Mme. de Sainte-Severe's circle, he very soon had made the
acquaintance of the persons whom this exclusive society considered to
be "the whole town." Gaston de Nueil recognized in them the invariable
stock characters which every observer finds in every one of the many
capitals of the little States which made up the France of an older
day.
First of all comes the family whose claims to nobility are regarded as
incontestable, and of the highest antiquity in the department, though
no one has so much as heard of them a bare fifty leagues away. This
species of royal family on a small scale is distantly, but
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