| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: That is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility.
I get no chance to name anything myself. The new creature names
everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest.
And always that same pretext is offered--it LOOKS like the thing.
There is a dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it
one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo." It will have to
keep that name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and it
does no good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than
I do.
WEDNESDAY.--Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not
have it to myself in peace. The new creature intruded. When I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: quiescent: (2) feeling, or inner sense, when the mind is just awakening:
(3) memory, which is decaying sense, and from time to time, as with a spark
or flash, has the power of recollecting or reanimating the buried past:
(4) thought, in which images pass into abstract notions or are intermingled
with them: (5) action, in which the mind moves forward, of itself, or
under the impulse of want or desire or pain, to attain or avoid some end or
consequence: and (6) there is the composition of these or the admixture or
assimilation of them in various degrees. We never see these processes of
the mind, nor can we tell the causes of them. But we know them by their
results, and learn from other men that so far as we can describe to them or
they to us the workings of the mind, their experience is the same or nearly
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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 Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: he would not have given her two farthings over and above the allowance
to which she had a right, even if it had been a question of some
indispensable trifle for her education.
In 1802 the Abbe died, before the marriage of his dear child, a
marriage which he, doubtless, would never have advised. The old father
found his daughter a great care now that the Abbe was gone. The high-
spirited girl, with nothing else to do, was sure to break into
rebellion against his niggardliness, and he felt quite unequal to the
struggle. Like all young women who leave the appointed track of
woman's life, Nais had her own opinions about marriage, and had no
great inclination thereto. She shrank from submitting herself, body
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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 Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: like the United States, in which the differences of opinion are
mere differences of hue, the right of association may remain
unrestrained without evil consequences. The inexperience of many
of the European nations in the enjoyment of liberty leads them
only to look upon the liberty of association as a right of
attacking the Government. The first notion which presents itself
to a party, as well as to an individual, when it has acquired a
consciousness of its own strength, is that of violence: the
notion of persuasion arises at a later period and is only derived
from experience. The English, who are divided into parties which
differ most essentially from each other, rarely abuse the right
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