| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: I could mention many instances, one especially, where a window having
been left broken for a long time, the ivy had pushed through and crept
over a row of books, each of which was worth hundreds of pounds.
In rainy weather the water was conducted, as by a pipe, along the tops
of the books and soaked through the whole.
In another and smaller collection, the rain came straight
on to a book-case through a sky-light, saturating continually
the top shelf containing Caxtons and other early English books,
one of which, although rotten, was sold soon after by permission
of the Charity Commissioners for L200.
Germany, too, the very birth-place of Printing, allows similar destruction
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: and women had in those days, as they ought always to have, common virtues
and pursuits. There were various classes of citizens, including
handicraftsmen and husbandmen and a superior class of warriors who dwelt
apart, and were educated, and had all things in common, like our guardians.
Attica in those days extended southwards to the Isthmus, and inland to the
heights of Parnes and Cithaeron, and between them and the sea included the
district of Oropus. The country was then, as what remains of it still is,
the most fertile in the world, and abounded in rich plains and pastures.
But in the course of ages much of the soil was washed away and disappeared
in the deep sea. And the inhabitants of this fair land were endowed with
intelligence and the love of beauty.
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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 Dreams by Olive Schreiner: his head bent low.
And one went to the far East and bought costly pigments, and made a rare
colour and painted, but after a time the picture faded. Another read in
the old books, and made a colour rich and rare, but when he had put it on
the picture it was dead.
But the artist painted on. Always the work got redder and redder, and the
artist grew whiter and whiter. At last one day they found him dead before
his picture, and they took him up to bury him. The other men looked about
in all the pots and crucibles, but they found nothing they had not.
And when they undressed him to put his grave-clothes on him, they found
above his left breast the mark of a wound--it was an old, old wound, that
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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 Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: air rests quiet over land and sea. The old breezes were gone; the new
ones were not yet risen. The flowers in the mission garden opened wide;
no wind came by day or night to shake the loose petals from their stems.
Along the basking, silent, many-colored shore gathered and lingered the
crisp odors of the mountains. The dust hung golden and motionless long
after the rider was behind the hill, and the Pacific lay like a floor of
sapphire, whereon to walk beyond the setting sun into the East. One white
sail shone there. Instead of an hour, it had been from dawn till
afternoon in sight between the short headlands; and the Padre had hoped
that it might be the ship his homesick heart awaited. But it had slowly
passed. From an arch in his garden cloisters he was now watching the last
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