| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: "In England, I understand," quoth the limber youth from the
South,--"in England a man isn't allowed to play with no
fire-arms. He's got to be taught all that when he enlists. I
didn't want much teaching how to shoot straight 'fore I served
Uncle Sam. And that's just where it is. But you was talking
about your Horse Guards now?"
I explained briefly some peculiarities of equipment connected
with our crackest crack cavalry. I grieve to say the camp roared.
"Take 'em over swampy ground. Let 'em run around a bit an' work
the starch out of 'em, an' then, Almighty, if we wouldn't plug
'em at ease I'd eat their horses."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: case he had no difficulty in proving to the other animals that they were
NOT in reality short of food, whatever the appearances might be. For the
time being, certainly, it had been found necessary to make a readjustment
of rations (Squealer always spoke of it as a "readjustment," never as a
"reduction"), but in comparison with the days of Jones, the improvement
was enormous. Reading out the figures in a shrill, rapid voice, he proved
to them in detail that they had more oats, more hay, more turnips than
they had had in Jones's day, that they worked shorter hours, that their
drinking water was of better quality, that they lived longer, that a
larger proportion of their young ones survived infancy, and that they had
more straw in their stalls and suffered less from fleas. The animals
Animal Farm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: net result of human labour in those fields, and though a grave injustice is
done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps the only field she is
fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman has probably little or nothing
to contribute in those fields that is radically distinct from that which
man might supply; there would be a difference in quantity but probably none
in kind, in the work done for the race.
But in those spheres of social activity, dealing especially with certain
relations between human creatures because of their diverse if complementary
relation to the production of human life, the sexes as sexes have often
each a part to play which the other cannot play for them; have each a
knowledge gained from phases of human experience, which the other cannot
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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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: sons; anxiously watching, anxiously guiding these, and plunging
with his whole fund of youthfulness into their sports and
interests. And all the while he was himself maturing - not in
character or body, for these remained young - but in the stocked
mind, in the tolerant knowledge of life and man, in pious
acceptance of the universe. Here is a farrago for a chapter: here
is a world of interests and activities, human, artistic, social,
scientific, at each of which he sprang with impetuous pleasure, on
each of which he squandered energy, the arrow drawn to the head,
the whole intensity of his spirit bent, for the moment, on the
momentary purpose. It was this that lent such unusual interest to
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