| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: which converts the juice of food into blood easily comprehended, when it
is considered that it is distilled by passing and repassing through the
heart perhaps more than one or two hundred times in a day? And what more
need be adduced to explain nutrition, and the production of the different
humors of the body, beyond saying, that the force with which the blood, in
being rarefied, passes from the heart towards the extremities of the
arteries, causes certain of its parts to remain in the members at which
they arrive, and there occupy the place of some others expelled by them;
and that according to the situation, shape, or smallness of the pores with
which they meet, some rather than others flow into certain parts, in the
same way that some sieves are observed to act, which, by being variously
Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: produces a false impression,
ALGERNON. Well, that is exactly what dentists always do. Now, go
on! Tell me the whole thing. I may mention that I have always
suspected you of being a confirmed and secret Bunburyist; and I am
quite sure of it now.
JACK. Bunburyist? What on earth do you mean by a Bunburyist?
ALGERNON. I'll reveal to you the meaning of that incomparable
expression as soon as you are kind enough to inform me why you are
Ernest in town and Jack in the country.
JACK. Well, produce my cigarette case first.
ALGERNON. Here it is. [Hands cigarette case.] Now produce your
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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 Euthyphro by Plato: among men, so also among the gods? Especially, about good and evil, which
have no fixed rule; and these are precisely the sort of differences which
give rise to quarrels. And therefore what may be dear to one god may not
be dear to another, and the same action may be both pious and impious; e.g.
your chastisement of your father, Euthyphro, may be dear or pleasing to
Zeus (who inflicted a similar chastisement on his own father), but not
equally pleasing to Cronos or Uranus (who suffered at the hands of their
sons).
Euthyphro answers that there is no difference of opinion, either among gods
or men, as to the propriety of punishing a murderer. Yes, rejoins
Socrates, when they know him to be a murderer; but you are assuming the
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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 A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: "he," "she," or "it," therefore "ae" will be used.
He found himself incapable of grasping at first why the bodily
peculiarities of this being should strike him as springing from sex,
and not from race, and yet there was no doubt about the fact itself.
Body, face, and eyes were absolutely neither male nor female, but
something quite different. Just as one can distinguish a man from a
woman at the first glance by some indefinable difference of
expression and atmospheres altogether apart from the contour of the
figure, so the stranger was separated in appearance from both. As
with men and women, the whole person expressed a latent sensuality,
which. gave body and face alike their peculiar character.... Maskull
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