| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: in words at what remained for me to do. I was thirty-one; I
was the head of a family; I had lost my health; I had never
yet paid my way, never yet made 200 pounds a year; my father
had quite recently bought back and cancelled a book that was
judged a failure: was this to be another and last fiasco? I
was indeed very close on despair; but I shut my mouth hard,
and during the journey to Davos, where I was to pass the
winter, had the resolution to think of other things and bury
myself in the novels of M. de Boisgobey. Arrived at my
destination, down I sat one morning to the unfinished tale;
and behold! it flowed from me like small talk; and in a
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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 Koran: themselves it is they wrong!
We have created for hell many of the ginn and of mankind; they
have hearts and they discern not therewith; they have eyes and they
see not therewith; they have ears and they hear not therewith; they
are like cattle, nay, they go more astray! these it is who care not.
But God's are the good names; call on Him then thereby, and leave
those who pervert His names; they shall be rewarded for that which
they have done.
And of those whom we have created is a nation who are guided in
truth and thereby act with equity; but they who say our signs are
lies, we will bring them down by degrees from whence they know not.
The Koran |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: as in the case of one of those black thawed patches above named), so
as to enclose within the toils whatever the creature is resting
on.[12] As soon as the nets are posted, up he must go and start her.
If she contrive to extricate herself from the nets,[13] he must after
her, following her tracks; and presently he will find himself at a
second similar piece of ground (unless, as is not improbable, she
smothers herself in the snow beforehand).[14] Accordingly he must
discover where she is and spread his toils once more; and, if she has
energy still left, pursue the chase. Even without the nets, caught she
will be, from sheer fatigue,[15] owing to the depth of the snow, which
balls itself under her shaggy feet and clings to her, a sheer dead
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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 Adam Bede by George Eliot: tin box, lad; but if anything happens to me, all the rest 'll be
thine, to take care o' Mother with."
Seth was pale and trembling: he felt there was some terrible
secret under all this. "Brother," he said, faintly--he never
called Adam "Brother" except in solemn moments--"I don't believe
you'll do anything as you can't ask God's blessing on."
"Nay, lad," said Adam, "don't be afraid. I'm for doing nought but
what's a man's duty."
The thought that if he betrayed his trouble to his mother, she
would only distress him by words, half of blundering affection,
half of irrepressible triumph that Hetty proved as unfit to be his
Adam Bede |
