| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: countenance, almost as pallid, the intelligence she dared not trust
her tongue to demand. Jemima put down the tea-things, and appeared
very busy in arranging the table. Maria took up a cup with trembling
hand, then forcibly recovering her fortitude, and restraining the
convulsive movement which agitated the muscles of her mouth, she
said, "Spare yourself the pain of preparing me for your information,
I adjure you!--My child is dead!" Jemima solemnly answered, "Yes;"
with a look expressive of compassion and angry emotions.
"Leave me," added Maria, making a fresh effort to govern her
feelings, and hiding her face in her handkerchief, to conceal her
anguish--"It is enough--I know that my babe is no more--I will
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: since we've all three of us got mediocre minds, it has just
landed us among mediocre people. Don't you suppose I see
through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything
we're surrounded with? That's why I want to buy a place at the
very top, where I shall be powerful enough to get about me the
people I want, the big people, the right people, and to help
them I want to promote culture, like those Renaissance women
you're always talking about. I want to do it for Apex City; do
you understand? And for father and mother too. I want all
those titles carved on my tombstone. They're facts, anyhow!
Don't laugh at me ...." She broke off with one of her clumsy
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: he will only know his fellow in art or wisdom, and no one else.
That is evident, he said.
But then what profit, Critias, I said, is there any longer in wisdom or
temperance which yet remains, if this is wisdom? If, indeed, as we were
supposing at first, the wise man had been able to distinguish what he knew
and did not know, and that he knew the one and did not know the other, and
to recognize a similar faculty of discernment in others, there would
certainly have been a great advantage in being wise; for then we should
never have made a mistake, but have passed through life the unerring guides
of ourselves and of those who are under us; and we should not have
attempted to do what we did not know, but we should have found out those
|
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 Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: and they resolved to slacken their speed. The sails were accordingly
taken in a little, and in spite of the intensity of the cold,
the explorers ventured out of their shelter, in order that they might
reconnoiter the plain, which was apparently as boundless as ever.
It was completely desert; not so much as a single point of rock
relieved the bare uniformity of its surface.
"Are we not considerably to the west of Formentera?" asked Servadac,
after examining the chart.
"Most likely," replied Procope. "I have taken the same course as I should
have done at sea, and I have kept some distance to windward of the island;
we can bear straight down upon it whenever we like."
|
