| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with
unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed
to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be
afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us,
and it is not meant to help us. It is not even its own reward,
except for the self-centred and - I had almost said - the
unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he
want, he shall do better to let that organ perish from disuse. And
to avoid the penalties of the law, and the minor CAPITIS DIMINUTIO
of social ostracism, is an affair of wisdom - of cunning, if you
will - and not of virtue.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: TRANSLATED BY GEORGE CALDERON
IN the summer, when both families were together at Yásnaya,
our own and the Kuzmínsky's, when both the house and the
annex were full of the family and their guests, we used our
letter-box.
It originated long before, when I was still small and had only
just learned to write, and it continued with intervals till the
middle of the eighties.
It hung on the landing at the top of the stairs beside the
grandfather's clock; and every one dropped his compositions into
it, the verses, articles, or stories that he had written on topical
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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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: discoveries for this time, and came back, musing with myself what
course I might take to know the virtue and goodness of any of the
fruits or plants which I should discover, but could bring it to no
conclusion; for, in short, I had made so little observation while I
was in the Brazils, that I knew little of the plants in the field;
at least, very little that might serve to any purpose now in my
distress.
The next day, the sixteenth, I went up the same way again; and
after going something further than I had gone the day before, I
found the brook and the savannahs cease, and the country become
more woody than before. In this part I found different fruits, and
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: blue calico, while a white pasteboard sun-bonnet, with broad cape,
covered her head.
"Well, Abigail, how art thou?" said Eli, quietly giving his hand to
his wife.
"I'm glad to see thee back," was her simple welcome.
No doubt they had kissed each other as lovers, but Asenath had
witnessed this manifestation of affection but once in her life--
after the burial of a younger sister. The fact impressed her with
a peculiar sense of sanctity and solemnity: it was a caress wrung
forth by a season of tribulation, and therefore was too
earnest to be profaned to the uses of joy. So far, therefore, from
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