| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: window-curtains, chairs, and joint-stools; undressing themselves
(as it were) before their transformation.
The philosophy of this transformation will not seem surprizing to
people who search into the bottom of things. Madam Bourignon, a
devout French lady, has shewn us, how man was at first created
male and female in one individual, having the faculty of
propagation within himself: A circumstance necessary to the state
of innocence, wherein a man's happiness was not to depend upon
the caprice of another. It was not till after he had made a faux
pas, that he had his female mate. Many such transformations of
individuals have been well attested; particularly one by
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: over this lake, or Cromwell's soldiers whitewashed that
fresco? Give me a clean, new American church, anyhow,
before all of your mouldy, tomby cathedrals. These
things are so many cancelled cheques to me. I have
nothing to pay on them. It is live issues that draw on
my heart. You American girls ought to be at home looking
into the negro problem, or Tammany, or the Sugar Trust,
instead of nosing into Rembrandts, or miracles at
Lourdes, or palaces. These are all back numbers. Write
n. g. on them and bury them. So, by the way, is your
Mrs. Waldeaux a back number. My own opinion is that
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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 Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: I
The Princess sings:
I am the princess up in the tower
And I dream the whole day thro'
Of a knight who shall come with a silver spear
And a waving plume of blue.
I am the princess up in the tower,
And I dream my dreams by day,
But sometimes I wake, and my eyes are wet,
When the dusk is deep and gray.
For the peasant lovers go by beneath,
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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 Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: compliments. Bertie's discussion of the double personality had been the
most intelligent which had come in from any of the class. The
illustration of the intoxicated hack-driver who had fallen from his hack
and inquired who it was that had fallen, and then had pitied himself,
was, said the Professor, as original and perfect an illustration of our
subjective-objectivity as he had met with in all his researches. And
Billy's suggestions concerning the inherency of time and space in the
mind the Professor had also found very striking and independent,
particularly his reasoning based upon the well-known distortions of time
and space which hashish and other drugs produce in us. This was the
sort of thing which the Professor had wanted from his students: free
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