| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: on her cloak.] No, no! I will go back, let Arthur do with me what
he pleases. I can't wait here. It has been madness my coming. I
must go at once. As for Lord Darlington - Oh! here he is! What
shall I do? What can I say to him? Will he let me go away at all?
I have heard that men are brutal, horrible . . . Oh! [Hides her
face in her hands.]
[Enter MRS. ERLYNNE L.]
MRS. ERLYNNE. Lady Windermere! [LADY WINDERMERE starts and looks
up. Then recoils in contempt.] Thank Heaven I am in time. You
must go back to your husband's house immediately.
LADY WINDERMERE. Must?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: to his greatness as a leader. All that can be affirmed is, that on
no other day of his short and glorious career was Lord Nelson more
splendidly true to his genius and to his country's fortune.
XLVIII.
And yet the fact remains that, had the wind failed and the fleet
lost steerage way, or, worse still, had it been taken aback from
the eastward, with its leaders within short range of the enemy's
guns, nothing, it seems, could have saved the headmost ships from
capture or destruction. No skill of a great sea officer would have
availed in such a contingency. Lord Nelson was more than that, and
his genius would have remained undiminished by defeat. But
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: attempted to realise this idea in the presence of Sir Humphry Davy
in the laboratory of the Royal Institution.[1] This was well
calculated to attract Faraday's attention to the subject. He read
much about it; and in the months of July, August, and September he
wrote a 'history of the progress of electro-magnetism,' which he
published in Thomson's 'Annals of Philosophy.' Soon afterwards he
took up the subject of 'Magnetic Rotations,' and on the morning of
Christmas-day, 1821, he called his wife to witness, for the first
time, the revolution of a magnetic needle round an electric current.
Incidental to the 'historic sketch,' he repeated almost all the
experiments there referred to; and these, added to his own
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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 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: in the world--the strangest, that is, except the very much
stranger in which it quickly merged itself. I had sat down with
a piece of work--for I was something or other that could sit--
on the old stone bench which overlooked the pond; and in this
position I began to take in with certitude, and yet without
direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person.
The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade,
but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour.
There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least,
in the conviction I from one moment to another found myself
forming as to what I should see straight before me and across
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