| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little
to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain
their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of
wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government
in the short space of four years.
My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and WELL upon this
whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
If there be an object to HURRY any of you in hot haste to a step
which you would never take DELIBERATELY, that object will be
frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated
by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: the unseen (aeides)--far otherwise, but from his knowledge (eidenai) of all
noble things.
HERMOGENES: Very good; and what do we say of Demeter, and Here, and
Apollo, and Athene, and Hephaestus, and Ares, and the other deities?
SOCRATES: Demeter is e didousa meter, who gives food like a mother; Here
is the lovely one (erate)--for Zeus, according to tradition, loved and
married her; possibly also the name may have been given when the legislator
was thinking of the heavens, and may be only a disguise of the air (aer),
putting the end in the place of the beginning. You will recognize the
truth of this if you repeat the letters of Here several times over. People
dread the name of Pherephatta as they dread the name of Apollo,--and with
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: old man, and grinned at her.
`They don't keep this room so tidy as the other,' Alice thought
to herself, as she noticed several of the chessmen down in the
hearth among the cinders: but in another moment, with a little
`Oh!' of surprise, she was down on her hands and knees watching
them. The chessmen were walking about, two and two!
`Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,' Alice said (in a
whisper, for fear of frightening them), `and there are the White
King and the White Queen sitting on the edge of the shovel--and
here are two castles walking arm in arm--I don't think they can
hear me,' she went on, as she put her head closer down, `and I'm
Through the Looking-Glass |
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 In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: eccentricity on the part of our guest; and instead of passing him
the water, flung his dinner overboard. I must do Mapiao justice:
all laughed, but his laughter rang the loudest.
These troubles of service were at worst occasional; the
embarrassment of the man's talk incessant. He was plainly a
practised conversationalist; the nicety of his inflections, the
elegance of his gestures, and the fine play of his expression, told
us that. We, meanwhile, sat like aliens in a playhouse; we could
see the actors were upon some material business and performing
well, but the plot of the drama remained undiscoverable. Names of
places, the name of Captain Hart, occasional disconnected words,
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