| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: My father stooped, re-fathered o'er my wounds.
So those two foes above my fallen life,
With brow to brow like night and evening mixt
Their dark and gray, while Psyche ever stole
A little nearer, till the babe that by us,
Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede,
Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass,
Uncared for, spied its mother and began
A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance
Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms
And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: is what the French call un galant homme. I should like to think he
is being treated as he deserves."
The form of her lips (I could see them under the brim of her hat)
was suddenly altered into a line of seriousness. The parasol
stopped swinging.
"I have given him what he wanted--that's myself," she said without a
tremor and with a striking dignity of tone.
Impressed by the manner and the directness of the words, I hesitated
for a moment what to say. Then made up my mind to clear up the
point.
"And you have got what you wanted? Is that it?"
Chance |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: abnormal manifestation of religious emotion, which in those times
had an extraordinary development. And the habit of blasphemy
diminished under the psychological and social evolution of our own
days, precisely when it ceased to be punished. Or, rather, it
continued to this day, as in Tuscany, where the Tuscan penal code
(Art. 136), which survived until December 31, 1889, still punished
it with five years' imprisonment. The illusion as to the efficacy
of punishment is so deeply rooted that a proposal was made in the
Senate, in 1875, to include this penalty in the new Italian penal
code. And at Murcia, in Spain, trials for blasphemy have lately
been re-established.
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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 Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: (ordinary) stone.
40. 1. The movement of the Tao
By contraries proceeds;
And weakness marks the course
Of Tao's mighty deeds.
2. All things under heaven sprang from It as existing (and named);
that existence sprang from It as non-existent (and not named).
41. 1. Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Tao,
earnestly carry it into practice. Scholars of the middle class, when
they have heard about it, seem now to keep it and now to lose it.
Scholars of the lowest class, when they have heard about it, laugh
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