| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: indissoluble chains by which they were themselves bound, but with little
pegs too small to be visible, making up out of all the four elements each
separate body, and fastening the courses of the immortal soul in a body
which was in a state of perpetual influx and efflux. Now these courses,
detained as in a vast river, neither overcame nor were overcome; but were
hurrying and hurried to and fro, so that the whole animal was moved and
progressed, irregularly however and irrationally and anyhow, in all the six
directions of motion, wandering backwards and forwards, and right and left,
and up and down, and in all the six directions. For great as was the
advancing and retiring flood which provided nourishment, the affections
produced by external contact caused still greater tumult--when the body of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: for meat as ever a young man had.
Meanwhile, my uncle, stooping over the fire, turned the letter
over and over in his hands.
"Do ye ken what's in it?" he asked, suddenly.
"You see for yourself, sir," said I, "that the seal has not been
broken."
"Ay," said he, "but what brought you here?"
"To give the letter," said I.
"No," says he, cunningly, "but ye'll have had some hopes, nae
doubt?"
"I confess, sir," said I, "when I was told that I had kinsfolk
Kidnapped |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: I grasp."
"But if they persistently refuse--"
"Dios!" she interrupted him. "Do you think that
your love is greater than mine? I was born with a
thousand years of love in me and had you not come
I should have gone alone with my dreams to the
grave. I am all women in one, not merely Concha
Arguello, a girl of sixteen." She clasped her hands
high above her head, lifting her eyes to the ashen
vault so soon to yield to the gay brush of dawn.
"Before all that great mystery," she said solemnly,
Rezanov |
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 Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or two
down for us that would answer.
CHAPTER IX.
TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT
STILL, we thought we would drop down there a
minute, but on another errand. Most of the pro-
fessor's cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new
way that somebody had just invented; the rest was
fresh. When you fetch Missouri beefsteak to the
Great Sahara, you want to be particular and stay up
in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would
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