| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: yourself."
"They SAY they are gentlemen," he suggested.
"Sometimes I can see it," was the response. "Sometimes they wear
orders. It's funny--if they have on a ribbon when you first
notice them, they follow you, and presto--the ribbon is gone! I
always laugh over that. I've watched them in the glass of the
shop windows. They try to look unconcerned, but as they walk
along they snap out the ribbon with their thumb--as one shells
little peas, you know."
She paused; then, as no one joined in her laugh, she continued,
"Well, at last the police got after me, That's a story that I've
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: opposition to it. But I did have a laugh at the great wisdom that
so terribly slandered, condemned and forbade my New Testament,
when it was published under my name, but required its reading when
published under an other's name! What type of virtue is this that
slanders and heaps shame on someone else's work, and then steals
it, and publishes it under one's own name, thereby seeking glory
and esteem through the slandered work of someone else! I leave
that for his judge to say. I am glad and satisfied that my work
(as St. Paul also boasts ) is furthered by my enemies, and that
Luther's work, without Luther's name but that of his enemy, is to
be read. What better vengeance?!
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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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: or leave me here to be starved and undone?' And the like of menservants.
The truth is, the case of poor servants was very dismal, as I shall
have occasion to mention again by-and-by, for it was apparent a
prodigious number of them would be turned away, and it was so. And
of them abundance perished, and particularly of those that these false
prophets had flattered with hopes that they should be continued in
their services, and carried with their masters and mistresses into the
country; and had not public charity provided for these poor creatures,
whose number was exceeding great and in all cases of this nature
must be so, they would have been in the worst condition of any people
in the city.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: what surrounds them. But in democracies the love of physical
gratification, the notion of bettering one's condition, the
excitement of competition, the charm of anticipated success, are
so many spurs to urge men onwards in the active professions they
have embraced, without allowing them to deviate for an instant
from the track. The main stress of the faculties is to this
point. The imagination is not extinct; but its chief function is
to devise what may be useful, and to represent what is real.
The principle of equality not only diverts men from the
description of ideal beauty - it also diminishes the number of
objects to be described. Aristocracy, by maintaining society in a
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