| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: the perfect social machine. Hence her words "very nice," "so
charming," were uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them
sound absurdly unreal.
"Yes, yes," said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair,
and she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began:
"Mrs. Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter--at least
to me--than tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my
manner of speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set
'em down to my want of practice, and not to my want of care."
Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess
his meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: How fair a nursling then I seemed, how foul
The canker that lay festering in the bud!
Now is the blight revealed of root and fruit.
Ye triple high-roads, and thou hidden glen,
Coppice, and pass where meet the three-branched ways,
Ye drank my blood, the life-blood these hands spilt,
My father's; do ye call to mind perchance
Those deeds of mine ye witnessed and the work
I wrought thereafter when I came to Thebes?
O fatal wedlock, thou didst give me birth,
And, having borne me, sowed again my seed,
Oedipus Trilogy |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: We leave the Judge to his repose. He could not be styled
fortunate at the hour of death. Unknowingly, he was a childless man,
while striving to add more wealth to his only child's inheritance.
Hardly a week after his decease, one of the Cunard steamers brought
intelligence of the death, by cholera, of Judge Pyncheon's son,
just at the point of embarkation for his native land. By this
misfortune Clifford became rich; so did Hepzibah; so did our little
village maiden, and, through her, that sworn foe of wealth and all
manner of conservatism, --the wild reformer,--Holgrave!
It was now far too late in Clifford's life for the good opinion
of society to be worth the trouble and anguish of a formal
House of Seven Gables |
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 Before Adam by Jack London: heredity, that is all. It will be noted, in passing,
that in this falling dream which is so familiar to you
and me and all of us, we never strike bottom. To
strike bottom would be destruction. Those of our
arboreal ancestors who struck bottom died forthwith.
True, the shock of their fall was communicated to the
cerebral cells, but they died immediately, before they
could have progeny. You and I are descended from those
that did not strike bottom; that is why you and I, in
our dreams, never strike bottom.
And now we come to disassociation of personality. We
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