| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: heaped in vast barriers, earth widening and spreading away and away
like the immense floor of the sea, earth chequered by day and by night,
and partitioned into different lands, where famous cities were founded,
and the races of men changed from dark savages to white civilised men,
and back to dark savages again. Perhaps their English blood
made this prospect uncomfortably impersonal and hostile to them,
for having once turned their faces that way they next turned them
to the sea, and for the rest of the time sat looking at the sea.
The sea, though it was a thin and sparkling water here, which seemed
incapable of surge or anger, eventually narrowed itself, clouded its
pure tint with grey, and swirled through narrow channels and dashed
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: It was at this tragic moment that they heard a sound which made
the heart of every one of them rise to his mouth. They heard
Peter crow.
"Peter!" they cried, for it was always thus that he signalled
his return.
"Hide her," they whispered, and gathered hastily around Wendy.
But Tootles stood aloof.
Again came that ringing crow, and Peter dropped in front of
them. "Greetings, boys," he cried, and mechanically they
saluted, and then again was silence.
He frowned.
Peter Pan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: of more than a million inhabitants," he said, almost timidly.
"I have hunted criminals in two hemispheres, and I have found them,"
said Muller simply. The young commissioner smiled and held out his
hand. "Ah, yes, Muller - I keep forgetting the great things you
have done. You are so quiet about it."
"What I have done is only what any one could do who has that
particular faculty. I do only what is in human power to do, and
the cleverest criminal can do no more. Besides which, we all know
that every criminal commits some stupidity, and leaves some trace
behind him. If it is really a crime which we have found the trace
of here, we will soon discover it." Muller's editorial "we" was a
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: that every mesh of the great net might gradually be supplied, and
there should be no gaps in the perfect variety of Nature's forms.
This development is one which we must believe to be at least
possible, if we allow that a Mind presides over the universe, and
not a mere brute necessity, a Law (absurd misnomer) without a
Lawgiver; and to it (strangely enough coinciding here and there
with the Platonic doctrine of Eternal Ideas existing in the Divine
Mind) all fresh inductive discovery seems to point more and more.
Let me speak freely a few words on this important matter. Geology
has disproved the old popular belief that the universe was brought
into being as it now exists by a single fiat. We know that the
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