| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: to action, he is urged by his friends to voluntary exertion, and not
to give way to silent, motionless grief. Exertion stimulates the heart,
and this reacts on the brain, and aids the mind to bear its heavy load.
Pain, if severe, soon induces extreme depression or prostration;
but it is at first a stimulant and excites to action, as we see when we
whip a horse, and as is shown by the horrid tortures inflicted in foreign
lands on exhausted dray-bullocks, to rouse them to renewed exertion.
Fear again is the most depressing of all the emotions; and it soon
induces utter, helpless prostration, as if in consequence of,
or in association with, the most violent and prolonged attempts to escape
from the danger, though no such attempts have actually been made.
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: from the terrestrial, unless the Selenites had instruments fit
for taking distant observations at their disposal.
"Evidently," said one of the officers; "but what has become of
the travelers? what they have done, what they have seen, that
above all must interest us. Besides, if the experiment has
succeeded (which I do not doubt), they will try it again.
The Columbiad is still sunk in the soil of Florida. It is now
only a question of powder and shot; and every time the moon is
at her zenith a cargo of visitors may be sent to her."
"It is clear," replied Lieutenant Bronsfield, "that J. T. Maston
will one day join his friends."
From the Earth to the Moon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: Her death was terrible to me; but I, once a lord of language, have
no words in which to express my anguish and my shame. She and my
father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured,
not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the
public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation. I
had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low by-word
among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had
given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools
that they might turn it into a synonym for folly. What I suffered
then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record.
My wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should
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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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: which bring with them all the waters of the north part of
Dorsetshire), yet it is a very inconsiderable poor place, scarce
worth seeing, and less worth mentioning in this account, only that
it sends two members to Parliament, which many poor towns in this
part of England do, as well as that.
From hence I stepped up into the country north-west, to see the
ancient town of Wimborne, or Wimborneminster; there I found nothing
remarkable but the church, which is indeed a very great one,
ancient, and yet very well built, with a very firm, strong, square
tower, considerably high; but was, without doubt, much finer, when
on the top of it stood a most exquisite spire--finer and taller, if
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