| 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 life and beauty. For, after all, star-fishes and sea-
anemones are dull substitutes for Sirens and Tritons; the lamps of
the sea-nymphs, those glorious phosphorescent medusae whose beauty
Mr. Gosse sets forth so well with pen and pencil, are not as
attractive as the sea-nymphs themselves would be; and who would
not, like Menelaus, take the grey old man of the sea himself asleep
upon the rocks, rather than one of his seal-herd, probably too with
the same result as the world-famous combat in the Antiquary,
between Hector and Phoca? And yet - is there no human interest in
these pursuits, more humanity and more divine, than there would be
even in those Triton and Nereid dreams, if realized to sight 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 The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: near me; he never sleeps of nights; if I wake, his voice is ringing
like a bourdon of bells, and I hear him muttering incantations in the
language of hell. Have you ever seen him eat an honest crust of bread
or a hearth-cake made by a good Catholic baker? His brown skin has
been scorched and tanned by hell-fires. Marry, and I tell you his eyes
hold a spell like that of serpents. Jacqueline, I will have none of
those two men under my roof. I see too much of the law not to know
that it is well to have nothing to do with it.--You must get rid of
our two lodgers; the elder because I suspect him; the youngster,
because he is too pretty. They neither of them seem to me to keep
Christian company. The boy is ever staring at the moon, the stars, and
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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 Theaetetus by Plato: to health as to enable them to cure themselves.
THEODORUS: I quite agree.
SOCRATES: Or again, in politics, while affirming that just and unjust,
honourable and disgraceful, holy and unholy, are in reality to each state
such as the state thinks and makes lawful, and that in determining these
matters no individual or state is wiser than another, still the followers
of Protagoras will not deny that in determining what is or is not expedient
for the community one state is wiser and one counsellor better than
another--they will scarcely venture to maintain, that what a city enacts in
the belief that it is expedient will always be really expedient. But in
the other case, I mean when they speak of justice and injustice, piety and
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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 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: a great, honest, just heart, quite equal to his gigantic frame,
he had been for some years witnessing with repressed uneasiness
the workings of a system equally bad for oppressor and oppressed.
At last, one day, John's great heart had swelled altogether too
big to wear his bonds any longer; so he just took his pocket-book
out of his desk, and went over into Ohio, and bought a quarter of
a township of good, rich land, made out free papers for all his
people,--men, women, and children,--packed them up in wagons, and
sent them off to settle down; and then honest John turned his face
up the creek, and sat quietly down on a snug, retired farm, to
enjoy his conscience and his reflections.
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
