| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: time the morning before, she had found a dime in the toe of one
of them and had had the whole house by the ears ever since till
she could spend it.
"Was it for licorice to make her licorice water?" inquired Dyke
gravely.
"Yes," said Mrs. Dyke. "I made her tell me what she was going
to get before she went, and it was licorice."
Dyke, though his mother protested that he was foolish and that
Presley and Vanamee had no great interest in "young ones,"
insisted upon showing the visitors Sidney's copy-books. They
were monuments of laborious, elaborate neatness, the trite
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: In effect, however, I admitted the existence of the "monster."
My article was warmly discussed, which procured it a high reputation.
It rallied round it a certain number of partisans. The solution
it proposed gave, at least, full liberty to the imagination.
The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings.
And the sea is precisely their best vehicle, the only medium
through which these giants (against which terrestrial animals,
such as elephants or rhinoceroses, are as nothing) can be produced
or developed.
The industrial and commercial papers treated the question chiefly from this
point of view. The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, the Lloyd's List,
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: coordinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study of
which we are engaged. Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm,
ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of
mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to
disappear, and tenderness to rule. The best thing is to describe
the condition integrally as a characteristic affection to which
our nature is liable, a region in which we find ourselves at
home, a sea in which we swim; but not to pretend to explain its
parts by deriving them too cleverly from one another. Like love
or fear, the faith-state is a natural psychic complex, and
carries charity with it by organic consequence. Jubilation is an
|
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 The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey: Greaser near gone, too. Now, seein' thet you was up late an'
prowlin' round the station where this Greaser was found, it ain't
onreasonable to think you might know how he got plugged--is it?'
"Stewart laughed kind of cold, an' he rolled a cigarette, all the
time eyin' Pat, an' then he said if he'd plugged the Greaser it
'd never hev been sich a bunglin' job.
"'I can arrest you on suspicion, Stewart, but before I go thet
far I want some evidence. I want to round up Danny Mains an'
thet little Greaser girl. I want to find out what's become of
your hoss. You've never lent him since you bed him, an' there
ain't enough raiders across the border to steal him from you.
The Light of Western Stars |
