| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: unwonted sound of the axe. Some of its lofty trees were laid low,
and by the second evening the cabin was complete. It was eight
feet wide, and eighteen feet long. The walls were six feet high,
and the whole was covered with buffalo skins. The fireplace was
in the centre, and the smoke found its way out by a hole in the
roof.
The hunters were next sent out to procure deer-skins for
garments, moccasins, and other purposes. They made the mountains
echo with their rifles, and, in the course of two days' hunting,
killed twenty-eight bighorns and black-tailed deer.
The party now reveled in abundance. After all that they had
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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 Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: his ears like a warning. But, in the first place, persons accustomed
to luxury have a certain indifference to it which misleads them. They
despise it, they use it; it is an instrument, and not the object of
their existence. Paul never imagined, as he observed the habits of
life of the two ladies, that they covered a gulf of ruin. Then, though
there may exist some general rules to soften the asperities of
marriage, there are none by which they can be accurately foreseen and
evaded. When trouble arises between two persons who have undertaken to
render life agreeable and easy to each other, it comes from the
contact of continual intimacy, which, of course, does not exist
between young people before they marry, and will never exist so long
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: were to stand or fall by what you may think of me; and I'm even
now," she went on wonderfully, "drawing a long breath--and, yes,
truly taking a great courage--from the hope that I don't in fact
strike you as impossible."
"That's at all events, clearly," he observed after an instant, "the
way I don't strike YOU."
"Well," she so far assented, "as you haven't yet said you WON'T
have the little patience with me I ask for--"
"You draw splendid conclusions? Perfectly. But I don't understand
them," Strether pursued. "You seem to me to ask for much more than
you need. What, at the worst for you, what at the best for myself,
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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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: Homer as "the exuberance of their celestial joy after their daily banquet."
A man smiles--and smiling, as we shall see, graduates into laughter--
at meeting an old friend in the street, as he does at any trifling pleasure,
such as smelling a sweet perfume.[1] Laura Bridgman, from her blindness and
deafness, could not have acquired any expression through imitation, yet when
a letter from a beloved friend was communicated to her by gesture-language,
she "laughed and clapped her hands, and the colour mounted to her cheeks."
On other occasions she has been seen to stamp for joy.[2]
[1] Herbert Spencer, `Essays Scientific,' &c., 1858, p. 360.
Idiots and imbecile persons likewise afford good evidence that
laughter or smiling primarily expresses mere happiness or joy.
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
