| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: human mind more important, perhaps, than even those gigantic
monsters whose models fill the lake at the Crystal Palace. The
research which has been bestowed, for the last century, upon these
once unnoticed atomies has well repaid itself; for from no branch
of physical science has more been learnt of the SCIENTIA
SCIENTIARUM, the priceless art of learning; no branch of science
has more utterly confounded a wisdom of the wise, shattered to
pieces systems and theories, and the idolatry of arbitrary names,
and taught man to be silent while his Maker speaks, than this
apparent pedantry of zoophytology, in which our old distinctions of
"animal," "vegetable," and "mineral" are trembling in the balance,
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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 Virginian by Owen Wister: The Southerner dodged it, and I saw once more the tiger
undulation of body, and knew my escort was he of the rope and the
corral.
"How are yu' Steve?" he said to the rollicking man. And in his
tone I heard instantly old friendship speaking. With Steve he
would take and give familiarity.
Steve looked at me, and looked away--and that was all. But it was
enough. In no company had I ever felt so much an outsider. Yet I
liked the company, and wished that it would like me.
"Just come to town?" inquired Steve of the Virginian.
"Been here since noon. Been waiting for the train."
The Virginian |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: But jealous Juno, from Pachynus' height,
As she from Argos took her airy flight,
Beheld with envious eyes this hateful sight.
She saw the Trojan and his joyful train
Descend upon the shore, desert the main,
Design a town, and, with unhop'd success,
Th' embassadors return with promis'd peace.
Then, pierc'd with pain, she shook her haughty head,
Sigh'd from her inward soul, and thus she said:
"O hated offspring of my Phrygian foes!
O fates of Troy, which Juno's fates oppose!
Aeneid |
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 A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: through agonies of self-conflict and shed secret tears not a few,
and had the beauties of the Furca Pass spoiled for me, and have
been called an "incorrigible Don Quixote," in allusion to the
book-born madness of the knight. For that spoil! They rustle,
those bits of paper--some dozen of them in all. In that faint,
ghostly sound there live the memories of twenty years, the voices
of rough men now no more, the strong voice of the everlasting
winds, and the whisper of a mysterious spell, the murmur of the
great sea, which must have somehow reached my inland cradle and
entered my unconscious ear, like that formula of Mohammedan faith
the Mussulman father whispers into the ear of his new-born
A Personal Record |
