| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: Give me thy last words; I am Palamon,
One that yet loves thee dying.
ARCITE.
Take Emilia
And with her all the worlds joy: Reach thy hand:
Farewell: I have told my last houre. I was false,
Yet never treacherous: Forgive me, Cosen:--
One kisse from faire Emilia: Tis done:
Take her: I die.
PALAMON.
Thy brave soule seeke Elizium.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: round you because I was such a ripping girl. We arranged it all: he
and I. We got Papa and Mamma and Johnny out of the way splendidly;
and then Bentley took himself off, and left us--you and me!--to take a
walk through the heather and admire the scenery of Hindhead. You
never dreamt that it was all a plan: that what made me so nice was
the way I was playing up to my destiny as the sweet girl that was to
make your boy happy. And then! and then! _[She rises to dance and
clap her hands in her glee]._
LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[shuddering]_ Stop, stop. Can no woman understand
a man's delicacy?
HYPATIA. _[revelling in the recollection]_ And then--ha, ha!--you
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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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: much as 'tis t'other way'; but I remember I said secretly to myself,
'I wish you would ask me the question fairly, I would consider
very seriously on it before I said No.'
He went on a good way with me, and I thought once or twice
he was in earnest, but to my real affliction, I found at last he
had a wife; but when he owned he had a wife he shook his head,
and said with some concern, that indeed he had a wife, and no
wife. I began to think he had been in the condition of my late
lover, and that his wife had been distempered or lunatic, or
some such thing. However, we had not much more discourse
at that time, but he told me he was in too much hurry of
Moll Flanders |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: are united, which they believed to exist, however dimmed or crushed, in
every human being, capable of being awakened, purified, and raised up to
a noble and heroic life. They concealed nothing moral from their
disciples: only they forbade them to meddle with intellectual matters,
before they had had a regular intellectual training. The witnesses of
reason and conscience were sufficient guides for all men, and at them
the many might well stop short. The teacher only needed to proceed
further, not into a higher region, but into a lower one, namely, into
the region of the logical understanding, and there make deductions from,
and illustrations of, those higher truths which he held in common with
every slave, and held on the same ground as they.
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