| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: and she scarcely knew which alternative seemed to make him the more
interesting. In either case, his life was assuredly a sad one; and
she passed many hours in speculating on the manner in which he
probably spent his evenings. She knew he lived at the back of his
shop, for she had caught, on entering, a glimpse of a dingy room
with a tumbled bed; and the pervading smell of cold fry suggested
that he probably did his own cooking. She wondered if he did not
often make his tea with water that had not boiled, and asked
herself, almost jealously, who looked after the shop while he went
to market. Then it occurred to her as likely that he bought his
provisions at the same market as Evelina; and she was fascinated by
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance,
what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a
higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge
but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the
advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is
often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge.
By long years of patient industry and reading of the
newspapers--for what are the libraries of science but files of
newspapers--a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his
memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters
abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to
Walking |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: cardinal business in the life of a lunatic, but his problem with
that is different not in kind but merely in degree from the problem
of lusts, vanities, and weaknesses in what we call normal lives. It
is an unconquered tract, a great rebel province in his being, which
refuses to serve God and tries to prevent him serving God, and
succeeds at times in wresting his capital out of his control. But
his relationship to that is the same relationship as ours to the
backward and insubordinate parishes, criminal slums, and disorderly
houses in our own private texture.
It is clear that the believer who is a lunatic is, as it were, only
the better part of himself. He serves God with this unconquered
|
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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: to be weaned, and yields only to a pretty rough assertion of the right
of the parent to be relieved of the child as soon as the child is old
enough to bear the separation. The same thing occurs with children:
they hang on to the mother's apron-string and the father's coat tails
as long as they can, often baffling those sensitive parents who know
that children should think for themselves and fend for themselves, but
are too kind to throw them on their own resources with the ferocity of
the domestic cat. The child should have its first coming of age when
it is weaned, another when it can talk, another when it can walk,
another when it can dress itself without assistance; and when it can
read, write, count money, and pass an examination in going a simple
|
