| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: own sorrow; but I never heard him utter a murmur of a complaint,
only words of tender emotion. When the coffin was carried to the
church he changed his clothes and went with the cortège.
When he reached the stone pillars he stopped us, said farewell to
the departed, and walked home along the avenue. I looked after him
and watched him walk away across the wet, thawing snow with his
short, quick old man's steps, turning his toes out at a sharp
angle, as he always did, and never once looking round.
My sister Masha had held a position of great importance in my
father's life and in the life of the whole family. Many a time in
the last few years have we had occasion to think of her and to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: to insist at large on every particular circumstance of it. It
must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories,
but lives. And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish
us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men;
sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest,
informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the
most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest
battles whatsoever. Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact
in the lines and features of the face in which the character is
seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to
give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of
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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 Marie by H. Rider Haggard: her fingers in order to set it upon a piece of tin, from which she had
first removed the more evident traces of the morning meal with her
constant companion, the ancient and unwashen vatdoek. As it chanced the
effort was not very successful, since the boiling liver fat burnt the
vrouw's fingers, causing her to drop it on the grass, and, I am sorry to
add, to swear as well. Not to be defeated, however, having first sucked
her fingers to ease their smart, she seized the sizzling liver with the
vatdoek and deposited it upon the dirty tin.
"There, nephew," she said triumphantly, "there are more ways of killing
a cat than by drowning. What a fool I was not to think of the vatdoek
at first. Allemachte! how the flesh has burnt me; I don't suppose that
Marie |
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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: traverses the immense spaces of the heavens, and how from the planets and
comets it is reflected towards the earth. To this I likewise added much
respecting the substance, the situation, the motions, and all the
different qualities of these heavens and stars; so that I thought I had
said enough respecting them to show that there is nothing observable in
the heavens or stars of our system that must not, or at least may not
appear precisely alike in those of the system which I described. I came
next to speak of the earth in particular, and to show how, even though I
had expressly supposed that God had given no weight to the matter of which
it is composed, this should not prevent all its parts from tending exactly
to its center; how with water and air on its surface, the disposition of
Reason Discourse |
