| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: When they had done this they washed their hands and feet and
went back into the house, for all was now over; and Ulysses said
to the dear old nurse Euryclea, "Bring me sulphur, which
cleanses all pollution, and fetch fire also that I may burn it,
and purify the cloisters. Go, moreover, and tell Penelope to
come here with her attendants, and also all the maidservants
that are in the house."
"All that you have said is true," answered Euryclea, "but let me
bring you some clean clothes--a shirt and cloak. Do not keep
these rags on your back any longer. It is not right."
"First light me a fire," replied Ulysses.
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: the ends of your fingers. But you hold, and your partner gets the
longer rope and makes it fast. You straighten up and look at your
hands. They are ruined. You can scarcely relax the crooks of the
fingers. The pain is sickening. But there is no time. The
skiff, which is always perverse, is pounding against the barnacles
on the piles which threaten to scrape its gunwale off. It's drop
the peak! Down jib! Then you run lines, and pull and haul and
heave, and exchange unpleasant remarks with the bridge-tender who
is always willing to meet you more than half way in such repartee.
And finally, at the end of an hour, with aching back, sweat-soaked
shirt, and slaughtered hands, you are through and swinging along
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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 In the Cage by Henry James: of all the way that, as her recovered friend looked up from
counting, Mrs. Jordan had just blown, in explanation, through her
teeth and through the bars of the cage: "I DO flowers, you know."
Our young woman had always, with her little finger crooked out, a
pretty movement for counting; and she had not forgotten the small
secret advantage, a sharpness of triumph it might even have been
called, that fell upon her at this moment and avenged her for the
incoherence of the message, an unintelligible enumeration of
numbers, colours, days, hours. The correspondence of people she
didn't know was one thing; but the correspondence of people she did
had an aspect of its own for her even when she couldn't understand
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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 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free,
that which is not never for a long time appearing to be
to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.
I know that most men think differently from myself; but
those whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of
these or kindred subjects content me as little as any.
Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the
institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it.
They speak of moving society, but have no resting-place
without it. They may be men of a certain experience and
discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
