| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: dock her there.
At this Mr. Burns was plunged into despair. For
indeed, to beat up to Hong-Kong against a fierce
monsoon, with a ship not sufficiently ballasted and
with her supply of water not completed, was an in-
sane project.
But the captain growled peremptorily, "Stick
her at it," and Mr. Burns, dismayed and enraged,
stuck her at it, and kept her at it, blowing away
sails, straining the spars, exhausting the crew--
nearly maddened by the absolute conviction that
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: their desks. First result aimed at by the old cooper! Nine months
after this preliminary meeting, the two liquidators distributed forty-
seven per cent to each creditor on his claim. This amount was obtained
by the sale of the securities, property, and possessions of all kinds
belonging to the late Guillaume Grandet, and was paid over with
scrupulous fidelity. Unimpeachable integrity was shown in the
transaction. The creditors gratefully acknowledged the remarkable and
incontestable honor displayed by the Grandets. When these praises had
circulated for a certain length of time, the creditors asked for the
rest of their money. It became necessary to write a collective letter
to Grandet of Saumur.
Eugenie Grandet |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: and that depends on the time of year, the time of days
their age, their sex, a hundred little things. When
the bucks carry antlers in the velvet, they frequent
the inaccessibilities of the highest rocky peaks, so
their tender horns may not be torn in the brush, but
nevertheless so that the advantage of a lofty viewpoint
may compensate for the loss of cover. Later you
will find them in the open slopes of a lower altitude,
fully exposed to the sun, that there the heat may
harden the antlers. Later still, the heads in fine
condition and tough to withstand scratches, they plunge
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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 Phaedrus by Plato: to intimate here, as in the Ion, Apology, Meno, and elsewhere, that there
is a faculty in man, whether to be termed in modern language genius, or
inspiration, or imagination, or idealism, or communion with God, which
cannot be reduced to rule and measure. Perhaps, too, he is ironically
repeating the common language of mankind about philosophy, and is turning
their jest into a sort of earnest. (Compare Phaedo, Symp.) Or is he
serious in holding that each soul bears the character of a god? He may
have had no other account to give of the differences of human characters to
which he afterwards refers. Or, again, in his absurd derivation of mantike
and oionistike and imeros (compare Cratylus)? It is characteristic of the
irony of Socrates to mix up sense and nonsense in such a way that no exact
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