| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: Soc. Very good, no doubt, if the professor taught you to distinguish
good and bad; but if not, where is the use of your learning? It would
scarcely help you, would it, to be told to arrange coins in piles, the
best coins at top and bottom and the worst in the middle, unless you
were first taught to distinguish real from counterfeit.
The Youth. Well no, upon my word, he did not teach us that, so that
the task of distinguishing between good and bad must devolve on
ourselves.
Soc. Well, shall we see, then, how we may best avoid making blunders
between them?
I am ready (replied the youth).
The Memorabilia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: on a visit to the Stones of Stennis took shelter from a storm
in a cottage close by the lake; and seeing a box-measuring-
line in the bole or sole of the cottage window, he asked the
woman where she got this well-known professional appendage.
She said: "O sir, ane of the bairns fand it lang syne at the
Stanes; and when drawing it out we took fright, and thinking
it had belanged to the fairies, we threw it into the bole, and
it has layen there ever since." '
This is for the one; the last shall be a sketch by the
master hand of Scott himself:
`At the village of Stromness, on the Orkney main island,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: had been the subject of a very animated discussion; the game of
billiards had waxed vehement; he had lost forty francs, an enormous
sum at Vendome, where everybody is thrifty, and where social habits
are restrained within the bounds of a simplicity worthy of all praise,
and the foundation perhaps of a form of true happiness which no
Parisian would care for.
"For some time past Monsieur de Merret had been satisfied to ask
Rosalie whether his wife was in bed; on the girl's replying always in
the affirmative, he at once went to his own room, with the good faith
that comes of habit and confidence. But this evening, on coming in, he
took it into his head to go to see Madame de Merret, to tell her of
La Grande Breteche |
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 United States Constitution: And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts,
Records, and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
Section 2. The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all
Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime,
who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State,
shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from
which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having
Jurisdiction of the Crime.
No person held to Service or Labor in one State, under the Laws thereof,
escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein,
The United States Constitution |
