| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: "Hal" and "Charles." Charles was a middle-aged, lightish-colored
man, with weak and watery eyes and a mustache that twisted
fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the limply drooping
lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen or twenty, with
a big Colt's revolver and a hunting-knife strapped about him on a
belt that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was the most
salient thing about him. It advertised his callowness--a
callowness sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly out of
place, and why such as they should adventure the North is part of
the mystery of things that passes understanding.
Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money pass between the man and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: living water, mingled from many sources and tainted with much
impurity. It is synthetic in its nature; it becomes simpler from
original complexities; the sediment subsides.
A life perfectly adjusted to its surroundings is a life without
mentality; no judgment is called for, no inhibition, no disturbance
of the instinctive flow of perfect reactions. Such a life is bliss,
or nirvana. It is unconsciousness below dreaming. Consciousness is
discord evoking the will to adjust; it is inseparable from need. At
every need consciousness breaks into being. Imperfect adjustments,
needs, are the rents and tatters in the smooth dark veil of being
through which the light of consciousness shines--the light of
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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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: be that sort--?"
"Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I
haven't."
"Perhaps. Yet if you haven't," she added, "I should suppose you'd
remember. Not indeed that I in the least connect with my
impression the invidious name you use. If I had only thought you
foolish," she explained, "the thing I speak of wouldn't so have
remained with me. It was about yourself." She waited as if it
might come to him; but as, only meeting her eyes in wonder, he gave
no sign, she burnt her ships. "Has it ever happened?"
Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: was an ugly, merry, unbreeched child of three, his lint-white hair in
a tangle, his face smeared with suet and treacle; but he ran to and
fro with so natural a step, and fell and picked himself up again with
such grace and good-humour, that he might fairly be called beautiful
when he was in motion. To meet him, crowing with laughter and
beating an accompaniment to his own mirth with a tin spoon upon a tin
cup, was to meet a little triumph of the human species. Even when
his mother and the rest of his family lay sick and prostrate around
him, he sat upright in their midst and sang aloud in the pleasant
heartlessness of infancy.
Throughout the Friday, intimacy among us men made but a few advances.
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